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Oral History Collection
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Special Collections
Musselman Library
Interview with
Patricia Seigworth Rhoads
Interviewer: Alex Ferraro
Interview Date: April 29, 2010
M. PATRICIA SEIGWORTH RHOADS ORAL HISTORY
HIST 300: Historical Methods
Alex Ferraro
April 29, 2010
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When I was deciding between interviewing someone in my family or another individual
whom I was not as familiar with, I chose to interview my grandmother because I felt that having
a written and verbal account of the first twenty years of her life would be of greater value to my
family both now and in the future. I knew going into the interview that my grandmother did not
have any grand stories about storming the beaches of Normandy or of nursing the sick in the
Pacific, but that her account of growing up during the war on a farm in a very rural region of
northwestern Pennsylvania would be a very different narrative to the familiar topics of World
War II. As I have learned over the past several weeks when reading about the New Social
History Movement, there are often stories outside of the mainstream accounts that can provide
great insight into everyday life during the major events in world history. At the end of my
interview, I came away knowing that while my grandmother did not fall into the “great white
men who did great things” side of history, her experience during the war was, in many ways, just
as insightful to me as any battlefield account would have been.
My grandmother and I have always been exceptionally close, largely due to the fact that
she lives just across town from me and to the fact that she and my mother have an especially
close relationship, she having raised my mother on her own after my grandparents divorced.
Going into the interview, I did not have any barriers of familiarity to break down as did others
who interviewed complete and total strangers, but I was surprised to note how our relationship
seemed to change once the tape recorder was clicked on. It seemed to me that once that
happened, our twenty-plus year relationship seemed to become much less casual, more of a
formal discussion of history rather than the casual conversations we are so used to. One of the
drawbacks to interviewing my grandmother is that, while I learned details that I have never
known before, I knew the general framework of her story and what had happened in the first
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twenty or so years of her life. I knew the important dates of her life, number of siblings, parents,
and her relationship with my late grandfather, but I did not know the details that made her story
more than just a mirror image of so many other young girls growing up in rural Pennsylvania in
that time. To compensate for this, I had to work harder to ensure that the often important
background information was not left out, so that the reader would be able to gain just as much
information as I would have had she been a total stranger to me.
As I was transcribing the interview, I noticed many small facts and phrases that I had not
noticed enough to take the time to clarify with her during the interview. Terms like “mother of
vinegar” (a jelly-like substance used to produce vinegar that was left in the barrel at the store),
“Tokyo Rose” (propaganda used by the Japanese to sway American troops toward their cause),
and “Lowell Thomas” (radio broadcaster in the 1930s and 40s) were completely new to me, but
they proved to be details that helped me gain an understanding of my grandmother’s memories
of the time we were discussing. Of the many detailed stories that I learned for the first time, my
favorites were the story of her signing up to sit at the top of the fire tower to watch for planes (as
if the Germans or Japanese would attack rural Pennsylvania first) and her account of my great-grandfather
coming home from an American Legion meeting on the day Pearl Harbor was
attacked with an unprecedented, in my grandmother’s mind, look of grief on his normally
emotionless (in the context of 1940s society) face.
Just as Allesandro Portelli tells the story of people in the Italian village where Luigi
Trastulli died in the midst of a NATO protest changing their story over time to account for the
importance of the events, my grandmother had adjusted one important story to fit within the
larger historical context. She had originally told me that she and my grandfather had met in the
middle of a huge celebration, which at the time of our interview she had concluded was Victory
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in Japan Day in August, 1945. However, as we later discussed, she knows that she did not meet
him until 1946 because they had not known each other for more than a year before their marriage
in June of 1947. I can only imagine that she had combined a very important event in her life
(meeting my grandfather for the first time, which she knew was on the day of a big celebration)
with the enormous celebration on V-J Day in August 1945. While neither she nor I have been
able to come up with the big celebration that was happening on the day she met my grandfather
in 1946, I am interested in finding out just what happened that day that she would associate so
closely with the festivities on V-J Day. While this is a minor fumble in the context of a much
larger recollection of the events before, and during, World War II, it further demonstrates the
flexibility of an individual’s memory and the possible tendency for any person, not just my
grandmother, to want to connect important personal events with important national events.
In the end, I learned a great deal more about the details of my grandmother’s life before
and during World War II, creating a document that will be of invaluable use to my family and
me for years to come.
I affirm that I have upheld the highest principles of honesty and integrity in my academic work
and have not witnessed a violation of the Honor Code.
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PATRICIA SEIGWORTH RHOADS Oral History
[Tape 1 Side 1]
Ferraro: It is March 12, 2010, and I am sitting here with Patricia Seigworth Rhoads in [the dining
room of her home at 28 Rose St. in] Brookville, Pennsylvania and were are going to talk with her
about her life before, and including her experiences in World War II. So to start off, could you
tell us when and where you were born?
Rhoads: I was born in Strattanville, Clarion County, Pennsylvania, in Western Pennsylvania.
Ferraro: And what date was that?
Rhoads: December 24, 1928.
Ferraro: And who were your parents and what did they do for a living?
Rhoads: My parents were Clem Seigworth and Bess Seigworth, and my father cleaned out gas
wells, in business for himself, and my mother is a former teacher, and we knew that as we were
growing up that she had been a teacher!
Ferraro: How many siblings did you have?
Rhoads: I had seven; there were eight of us all together.
Ferraro: You were the oldest? Next to oldest?
Rhoads: Next to the oldest of eight.
Ferraro: What impact did your father’s work situation have on the family whenever you were
growing up? Was he around? Was he home?
Rhoads: Oh, he was home every night, yes, and he cleaned out gas wells in probably a three
county area around Clarion County.
Ferraro: What was the relationship like between your parents that you were able to know during
this time?
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Rhoads: Well, I think they respected each other’s intelligence, and they struggled during the
Depression, like many others, for survival; food and shelter and so forth. But actually looking
back, we had more than many families in that small community. They were miners, basically.
We had a car, a truck, and a telephone, and many did not have those luxuries in the thirties.
Ferraro: What was your extended family like? Did you have much relationship with them, with
your grandparents, with other cousins?
Rhoads: Yes, it was a good relationship there, particularly with my mother’s parents, my
grandparents on her side. But my father came from a large family so there was lots of interaction
among his brothers and sisters.
Ferraro: What was your relationship like with your siblings growing up?
Rhoads: Well, I was the first girl, second born, but the first girl, and there were four boys, so I
got the house chores [laughing] and we never had scrabbles [scraps], or fights, like many siblings
did. We were just in the mode to survive, and I think that was predominant, even though at the
time I didn’t realize that. But we raised a lot of our own food and there were chores for
everybody, and being the only girl there for a number of years, I cleaned up the kitchen; I helped
with the cooking and so forth. So it was very congenial, really.
Ferraro: What were your responsibilities like around the house compared to those of your
brothers growing up?
Rhoads: Well they did the outside work: the milking of the cows, the bringing in of hay, tending
the gardens. I had the kitchen work and took care of the younger babies. My youngest brother, I
changed more diapers of his than my mother did. I was the second mother, to put it bluntly.
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Ferraro: Compared to the rest of the families in and around Strattanville, what was your family
life? Did you feel that you had more than other families did, did you feel that the relationships
you had were different from them? How did your family compare to other families in the area?
Rhoads: I think in later years it dawned on me that we had more than many, just like I
mentioned, the telephone, truck and the car. We always had our own food; there was no
scramble for food. We didn’t live from paycheck to paycheck like many of the miners did at that
time. So, maybe we had less stress in our lives, perhaps, because of raising our food and our
parents were both very frugal. I didn’t feel we were better off, but in later years I realized that
many of them didn’t have telephones or even cars, let alone a truck and a car. So I guess we
were comfortably well off.
Ferraro: Tell us a little bit about your homestead. I know you lived several different places
growing up. Where did you first live and tell a little about that?
Rhoads: Our first house that I can recall, and I was very young, was directly across from the
Methodist church in Strattanville. Then, as the babies kept coming, we outgrew that house. So
my parents rented a house up on Main Street that had more room. In the meantime, they had
bought some property on the edge of Strattanville to build a house. That was started by I think,
1935. It was piecemeal, you did what you could afford and it took a while. We moved in 1937,
and the inside was not finished, but it was big enough to hold the family, the larger family by
that time. There was more land to have a bigger garden, and that was when the animals came
too. There was a small barn there that the cows were kept in and chicken coops that the chickens
could survive in. So we had more room after we built that house out there on the road.
Ferraro: What year was the house finished that you moved in to?
8
Rhoads: 1937. It wasn’t finished. There was no plastering done, just the bare shell, enough that
we could live in it. No furnace, coal stove in the kitchen and a fireplace in the living room, and
that was the basic heat. The furnace wasn’t put in until many years later.
Ferraro: What was the process of building the house like for your family? Did you watch the
house being built? What did your father do to help the building? Did you hire people? Did your
family do it itself?
Rhoads: My father hired a contractor in Corsica [10 miles east of Strattanville] that did the main
building, but he had bought an old school building and much of the lumber was saved out of that
and some of the stonework was used for the basement. So a lot of that was hauled in by my
father because he had the truck. But the basic structure was done by these two contractors that
he had hired. Again, it was not, you hired them today and they finished three months or a year
from now. It was kind of piecemeal, as you could afford to do it.
Ferraro: What was the community that you grew up in like? What was Strattanville like during
your childhood years, up to the start of the war?
Rhoads: Well, we had a school building by the late thirties that had first grade through twelfth.
All in this large building, and later the high school students were sent to another community, so
we didn’t have high school in Strattanville anymore. They were sent to another community,
specifically Clarion-Limestone [school district, named for Clarion and Limestone Townships,
which surround the borough of Strattanville] for their high school education. They had first
through eighth grade until I was ready for my freshman year, and then we were transferred to
another community. But that school building was then replaced and a beautiful new building
was built and it housed one through eighth grade, the new building. Eventually, they totally
merged with Clarion-Limestone School [District] and they no long taught anybody in
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Strattanville. But that took a period of twelve years at least, until there was no longer anyone
taught in Strattanville. The community was made up of a lot of miners. There wasn’t a lot of
turnover in the people. Many of the people were poor, you could tell that. It was a very healthy
community to grow up in, really.
Ferraro: What were the main industries in the town? Did people travel to go to work? What was
the location in relation to Pittsburgh or Clarion, some of the larger towns in the area?
Rhoads: It would be about 90 miles north of Pittsburgh. Mining was the major industry, there
was some lumbering around. By the late thirties, there were a lot of people employed at the glass
plant in Clarion, Owens-Illinois Glass Plant, which is three miles away. The mines were
diminishing by the thirties, too, so there were a lot of people employed in Clarion at the Owens-
Illinois Glass Plant.
Ferraro: So obviously a very rural area?
Rhoads: Very rural, very rural.
Ferraro: What about agriculture? Were there many farmers, people who worked in town and
were merchants and that type of thing? What were the businesses in town, in Strattanville itself?
Rhoads: We had our own post office, and there were two to three grocery stores over the years.
Of course, down to none, now in later years. At one time, everything you needed you could buy
in the small town of Strattanville. Population was around four to five hundred, basically.
Everybody knew everybody.
Ferraro: Were you a member of a church during this time? Which church were you a member
of?
Rhoads: I went to the Methodist church, and was married eventually in the Methodist Church in
Strattanville. Still belong to a Methodist Church [laughing]. There were a couple other
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churches. Baptist, if I recall correctly, and a holy-rollers, or something to that effect. It was a
much louder, a good distance from the basic Methodist church that we had in Strattanville. It
was just a different type of people that were attracted to it.
Ferraro: Being in a rural area, most families were Protestant. Were they Methodist as well or
what was the breakdown religiously?
Rhoads: I would say most of them were Protestant at that time, in those twenty years we are
talking about, the thirties and forties.
Ferraro: Any other religions? Any Catholics or Jewish people, other religions?
Rhoads: No Jewish people. Later years, mid-forties, there were some Catholics. Of course they
went to church in Clarion, which was three miles away. Just a few of them though, not a whole
lot.
Ferraro: What was your family’s involvement with the church? Obviously attending services
every Sunday. What role did the church play in your life growing up?
Rhoads: I would say very important. In fact, I have a picture that shows me on the cradle roll [a
list of those new children baptized into the church] of the Methodist church in Strattanville in
April of 1929 I was on the cradle roll, so my life began there. We all went to the Sunday school
programs and church, but Sunday school was very important in my life. We had a good
foundation there. Local people did the teaching and it was just a good thing.
Ferraro: What about the political affiliation of people in town? What role did politics play in
either your family or the town in general?
Rhoads: By the forties, I would say basically the town was strong on the Republican side. My
family was Democrat and big supporters of President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt. But many
weren’t impressed with him.
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Ferraro: Do you have any memories of political discourse between your father or people he
worked with or knew? Any among your family?
Rhoads: My mother and father were very active in the Democrat Party in Strattanville itself and
Clarion County. My father had a couple brothers that he could have big arguments about the
Democrat versus Republican. Of course, they loved to criticize Eleanor Roosevelt at that time
and they did freely. But basically, my family supported Roosevelt, whatever he did. I have
often laughed; I don’t know how funny this is to someone else. My father had a big roll-top desk
that he worked out of. On our desk, we didn’t have a picture of Jesus Christ. We had Franklin
Roosevelt’s picture on that desk, framed! [Laughing]
Ferraro: Your parents’ political affiliation obviously played a big role growing up, for you?
Rhoads: I admired them for their role. I remember one time my mother had an argument with
her brother-in-law about who they were supporting for one office or another and I always
thought that was amusing. She didn’t back down, she took her stance, it was Grace Sloan
[Democratic politician originally from Clarion County, Pennsylvania. She later served as
Pennsylvania State Treasurer and State Auditor General] they were arguing about. My mother
supported her and Uncle George [brother of Clem Seigworth] didn’t. That was a mild
interruption in their relationship, really.
Ferraro: What memories do you have of national issues in the thirties until the time you were a
teenager and the war started? What role did the national issues that were happening have on
your family?
Rhoads: Remember now, in the thirties, I wasn’t very old. But, my father had served in World
War I and he was greatly interested in the storm coming in Europe. That weighed heavily on
him. I think it would be 1937, I was about eight years old, we got a Pittsburgh paper daily and
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he insisted that I start a scrapbook; saving the headlines form those papers as the war progressed.
Czechoslovakia, Poland, and so forth in central Europe. Of course Neville Chamberlain out of
England and how he appeased Hitler supposedly and that was why we were behind the eight ball
when we got into the war. So, he was very conscious of it, and I think he passed that on to me
that it was something I needed to be aware of.
Ferraro: Your father was a World War I veteran? Can you tell us a little bit about how his
service affected him for the rest of his life that you can remember?
Rhoads: Oh, I think it affected him the rest of his life. He was one of the older vets called. He
wasn’t married at the time, maybe twenty six or something when he went in. I have a letter that
he had written from the camp where he did his initial training before he went overseas. At that
time, people didn’t travel to Europe unless they were very wealthy. So, here are all these young
men from the country being shipped over to France to fight this war and he was only in a year,
but I think it left a great impression on him. Here’s America and we were living in the country
and everything was so cozy and all of a sudden we are thrust into the war in France. He was in
the engineering corps that built roads, but it just made a big impression and he passed that on to
the older kids in our family, there was no question about it.
Ferraro: Were there other veterans in your family? Older cousins, uncles?
Rhoads: Not in World War I, no. But in World War II, that’s a whole different story. It was
more involved too, lasted longer, so there were a lot of relatives, lots of neighbors serving.
Relatives, people you knew. My older brother went in toward the end of the war, so yes it
caused you to be aware of and involved. When you were with people that close to you in the
war.
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Ferraro: What is the earliest memory you have growing up? What is one of the first things you
can remember that really has stuck in your mind since? Do you remember how old you were?
Rhoads: I suppose the most impressive thing that happened: my father fell off of his drilling rig
and broke his back and there were a number of them bringing him home and laying him on a
couch, pulling those heavy boots off. He was in agony. That was a rough winter. We survived
it. His father came and bought the boys a wagon. We still lived on Main Street and my father
had a lady friend who was like a mother to him, she was an older lady and she had a big house
with a big basement, so the potatoes that we raised were stored up in her house. Well when my
dad broke his back, the boys weren’t that old at the time and the boys had no way to get the bulk
of them down to our house, which was four blocks away from our house. She was Mrs. Strattan.
My grandfather came, which he didn’t very often. He had twelve kids of his own, so he made
frequent trips to any one of them. He came to my dad who was laying there with his back
broken and bought the boys a wagon. A Radio Flyer with the wooden sides and boy that was
something! I think he visited us about two more times in all those years. But that was a booster.
Ferraro: I know that you were born at home like most people were, but what was the medical
care like at the time when your father was hurt?
Rhoads: He eventually had a cast put on and he did recover, but there was no money coming in
when he was laid up like that. But his father, my grandfather probably bought this wagon out of,
I don’t want to use the word pity, but out of empathy for what Clem was going through at that
time. But he recovered and then I just thought the other day, when they were talking about the
floods in Pittsburgh on Saint Patrick’s Day 1936. He took his truck, because there weren’t that
many trucks around, and hauled food to Pittsburgh for that flood. I always that that was a neat
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thing for him to do, a man from Strattanville, Pennsylvania, a little old rural town, and he hauled
this stuff to Pittsburgh for the flood victims.
Ferraro: I assume that when you father was hurt you had a doctor that came to the house. What
if you needed some additional care, did you go to Clarion?
Rhoads: He went to an osteopathic doctor in Clarion, there were two them in business, Dr. Long
was the one who took care of his back. He did recover, but to see your father lay down who
never shed a tear and showed no emotion, almost screaming when they took those boots off. I
suppose it was the stress on his back. It was scary to a child, and I was just a child then.
Ferraro: When did you start going to school? Do you remember how old you were? You told
us a little about the school situation, but where did you go to school and how old were you?
Rhoads: Well, I actually was one of the youngest ones in my class. I think I was five when I
started first grade, wouldn’t have been six until December 24. It was in Strattanville School;
actually at that time when we lived across from the Methodist church the school was just about a
block away on one of the back streets of Strattanville, Washington [Street] to be specific. They
had names [laughing]. So that was my first school and I don’t remember anything from first
grade, second grade, but in third grade I have some memories of that. All those years we had
wonderful teachers; they lived in the community and they were very caring teachers.
Ferraro: What was an average day like in your early years of going to school when you were in
first, second grade?
Rhoads: Well I don’t remember anything outstanding. You got up and went to school and came
home for lunch, there were no lunches served in schools at that time. I don’t remember anything
specific there was just a natural progression in your life, I guess.
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Ferraro: What time of day did you come home and when you did you once you got back from
school, did you immediately begin helping your mother with the chores?
Rhoads: Back in second grade, I don’t have any memories of that. It was obviously very normal;
I obviously have memories of things that happened in school. Second grade, the teacher asked
every one of us what we wanted to be. Well, we had just read a story about Indians, and guess
what I said? I wanted to be an Indian squaw! Well everyone laughed, second graders laughed,
and it took me a minute, but I figured why. Then in fourth grade, I have no memory of what I
did before or after school. But the teachers had a rubber hose, and that was to be feared. That
was the punishment, corporal punishment. One girl was told to not chew gum and she later
chewed gum, and she got the rubber hose. The whole community just exploded! How dare she
beat this girl with a rubber hose! It simmered down, but it was a major incident. Most of us
knew better than to test the teacher, and she had. Other than that it was all routine for me.
Ferraro: Did you have other kids, obviously you had brothers and sisters your age, but did you
have other kids outside your family that you spent time with, that you played with?
Rhoads: Yes, there were a number of girls, one when we lived across from the Methodist
church; there was a girl who lived with her grandparents across the street. I can remember
playing dolls with her, but then as I got older there were other girls around Strattanville my age.
We had a good time together. Then you were asked, “could I go play with so and so?” “Yes, but
you be back in an hour.” It wasn’t a question of being gone all day, you were given certain time
limits and you had better abide by that. It was a whole different world, my family was surviving
and I guess that was it, just survival.
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Ferraro: What effect did the Great Depression have on your everyday life if your family was
surviving, like everyone else was at the time? Do you remember any specific effects, things you
had to go without during the time?
Rhoads: No, I can’t say that I did. As I look back on it, we were poor, but I didn’t know that.
By today’s standards we were definitely poor but as far as doing without, back then, even those
years back my mother had lard stored in the attic for shortening. I have no idea who had a pig,
but she rendered the lard. It was a whole way of life, it was very simple. Foods were very
simple then, too. We didn’t have a lot of money to buy extra things it was just whatever was on
the table you ate. I never went away hungry.
Ferraro: What sorts of foods did you have? Obviously having access to animals, did you have
access to produce or anything like that? What did daily meals consist of?
Rhoads: We always had ham, home cured ham, and lots of pork, my mother would can that, and
chickens. Chickens then were not small and scrawny, they were big and fat, a chicken weighed
maybe seven eight pounds, could feed the family with one bird, lot of meat on them. But we had
an abundance of chicken and pork, not so much beef. One time they even raised rabbits, but I
could not eat the rabbits! When I would see them kill a rabbit, my older brother, that was
enough for me. My dad wasn’t much of a hunter, but many people survived on hunting; rabbits
and squirrels and we didn’t have that when my father was in charge. I thought we had good
meals.
Ferraro: How many animals did you have that your family owned?
Rhoads: I think the most cows we ever had at one time was three. Then my dad had a mule, that
was the first work animal, and it had been a mule that my uncle had used in the mine and that
was kind of a treat to watch this mule pull something and later he had a team of horses that did a
17
lot of that work, but we raised everything. My mother had a big strawberry patch and there were
apples on the trees, potatoes, turnips, you name it, we grew it. My mother canned a lot of that
stuff too, so we had it year round.
Ferraro: Your mother had a garden in addition to the strawberries?
Rhoads: Oh yes, she had a big garden.
Ferraro: What sorts of things did you grow there? Did you have access or orchards or apples,
anything like that?
Rhoads: We had apple trees on the property when we finally moved to the new house, and a big
strawberry patch and then a huge garden. They bought another two acres across the road and
that was planted with potatoes and corn. Potatoes I would say, we never bought potatoes, they
were stored in the food cellar in the basement and lasted all winter.
Ferraro: What sorts of things did you have to buy that you couldn’t produce on your own, food
or otherwise?
Rhoads: Sugar. Sugar was a big item. Bought a lot of sugar, flour, and they used to buy vinegar
out of a big barrel, and you always had to have a piece of the mother of the vinegar, it was a
slimy looking thing and you bought your vinegar out of that. It didn’t come in plastic or glass
bottles at the time. Flour, lots of flour, mother did a lot of baking. She made a lot of bread in my
early years; she made all the bread we ate. It was a real treat if you think about it. Basically
flour, sugar, vinegar, spices, I presume, for the pickles because she always canned pickles. Pasta
was almost unheard of in the thirties, I remember macaroni was the first pasta we ever had but
when that came in I’m not sure. The pasta was not what it is today, it just wasn’t there. I don’t
know when I had my first spaghetti, it wasn’t in our childhood.
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Ferraro: Did you do traveling outside of Strattanville? Did you go to Clarion to see family?
What were your trips away from home like beyond going to school and the day to day routine?
Rhoads: Well, we went to Clarion for shopping, banking, and so forth that couldn’t be done in
Strattanville. My mother’s parents lived about ten miles away so we would go there on holidays.
My father’ s family was close to twenty miles away so we didn’t go there often and there were so
many of them. Hospital, with the doctors in Clarion, they sent you to Grove City Hospital [45
miles away] so the trips were made to Grove City Hospital. Early, probably in 1940 or a little
earlier, the American Legion had a drum and bugle corps that was made up of my older brother
and I and other veterans [children] from Strattanville, maybe twenty of us all together and we
went to parades all over the Clarion County area. That was fun, I played the bugle and my
brother played the drums and my dad always took a load of kids wherever we were going and
that was one of the big trips out of Strattanville other than meeting grandparents.
Ferraro: You mentioned the drum and bugle corps, but what other organizations were available
to young children, young teenagers at the time?
Rhoads: Not much. At that time the drum and bugle corps and that was just for the children of
the American Legion. The church had no social functions, they had winter meetings where a
visiting pastor came in and asked people to dedicate their lives, born-again was probably similar
to that today. But there wasn’t much social [life] really, the Legion was the center of our social
life. They had a Christmas party every year for the kids, which I always looked forward to.
When I got old enough I joined the Junior Auxiliary of the Legion, but it was the center of our
life.
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Ferraro: What relationship did your father have, obviously a member of the Legion, what
organizations did your parents belong to? You mentioned being a member of the Democrat
party. What relationship did your family have to other organizations in town?
Rhoads: None. I could quickly say none. The veterans themselves were members of the Legion
and they had an auxiliary, my mother was a part of that. Various projects they had and they all
worked on, the people who belonged to that group. They even had a Junior Auxiliary that I
belong to years later but that was the heart of our family. I don’t think there was much
socialization at that time so I would say the Legion was pretty much it.
Ferraro: Was your father a member of the local school board as well?
Rhoads: Yes, he was.
Ferraro: What sort of involvement did he have with that?
Rhoads: That’s back when they had a county superintendent [of schools], no administrative head
of the schools at that time, they had a county superintendent who was kind of the overseer of all
the schools in the county at that time. My father was president of the board and when they built
the new building in Strattanville, he took the responsibility to drive to Harrisburg for approval of
the plans as they were developed. Totally different from what we have today. He gave it an
awful lot of time, to the building of that new school building.
Ferraro: How long did he serve on the school board?
Rhoads: I would say probably six years at various levels; maybe it was more than that but at least
that much. I know in preparation for the building of that new building, we wondered if he
shouldn’t just move to Harrisburg and work out of there, he spent so much time there.
Ferraro: I’m assuming that members of the school board were all male?
Rhoads: Oh yes.
20
Ferraro: So what was the role of women during this time if men were so involved?
Rhoads: Not very much. Not very much. Back then, the schools could not dare hire a married
woman. She couldn’t be married, but when that came in I’m not sure. There was a lot of
unemployment due to the Depression. We had one teacher who was a local girl, Miss Rickard,
we found out later she was married, and they let her go. She had violated the rules and kept her
marriage a secret, but she couldn’t teach because of the employment issue. Women didn’t have
much of a role, all of the teachers I can recall, except for one who came from Rimersburg [20
miles away], lived in Strattanville. That was the role women had, for the teachers. That’s it.
Ferraro: Your mother was a teacher and had obviously gone to college herself, so can you tell us
a little about your mother’s educational experiences?
Rhoads: Nineteen years old she graduated from Clarion Normal School [now Clarion University
of Pennsylvania]. That was a two year degree, but later they offered courses so that she could
have gotten a four year degree but she must have taught about eight years, nine years, there was
no tenure then. One year you worked in Reynoldsville [20 miles away, in Jefferson County], one
year you were in the Knox [ten miles away, in northern Clarion County] area, wherever you
could get a job. Normal school implies a two year degree. She was 19 when she graduated from
Normal School instead of high school. She took the train from Corsica to Clarion on weekends
so she could get back from school.
Ferraro: Compared to other women, mothers of other children that you knew, was your mother’s
education rare compared to the people who lived in Strattanville?
Rhoads: I would say in Strattanville definitely.
Ferraro: Were there other people who had more education than your mother had or was that
pretty much the extent of people’s education?
21
Rhoads: We had a doctor that lived right in Strattanville and I can’t think of anyone else who
had any more education than my mother did. It was very uncommon, really, if you think about
it.
Ferraro: Even in 1919 it was still very rare for women to have an education?
Rhoads: Yes, yes definitely. There were a few but it wasn’t that common. It doesn’t compare at
all to today.
Ferraro: Your father did not go to college?
Rhoads: He went to the eighth grade. That was kind of the norm for people at the time. But he
was very bright, I always thought.
Ferraro: In the lead up to Pearl Harbor, what kinds of things were you hearing or perceiving
from your parents about the progression and lead up to the war?
Rhoads: Well, it was the Nazi government in Germany that was taking over country after
country, just walking through them and then all of a sudden they were part of the Nazi
government. So when Japan hit us that brought Japan into it and before that I don’t think there
was that much of a threat, but it wasn’t evident until we were bombed in Pearl Harbor that it all
materialized.
Ferraro: Do you have any memory, in the lead up to Pearl Harbor, of hearing your dad talk about
the fear of the Germans or the fear of an attack on the United States as the rest of the world was
becoming involved in the war?
Rhoads: I don’t remember him talking so much about the United States being attacked but it was
the threat of the Nazis taking over all these countries in Europe. At one time, they were ready to
invade France so there was a big chunk of Europe that was already under the control of Hitler.
And that was scary. As I say, once Japan bombed Pearl Harbor that brought Japan in and an
22
invasion. Eventually, Hitler made a deal with Mussolini in Italy and so that brought southern
Europe into the conflict in support of Nazi Germany. So all of Europe was. London in England,
was under siege there from the bombs. There was lots of talk about us getting into the war soon
but everyone said, “no, no, no, that’s not our war.” Once Japan bombed Pearl Harbor it was our
war and that brought us in full tilt.
Ferraro: Were people supporting, your family was Democratic, the President’s actions of
keeping us out of the war or was there--?
Rhoads: It was a controversial thing. There were isolationists and that started when, before
England was ever attacked there were a lot of people that kept saying “this isn’t our war, this
isn’t our war.” So it was controversial but I think at the beginning of the war felt that it was all
out war effort. Roosevelt, I give him credit for bringing everybody in, they may not have liked
some of the things he did. But everybody, industry, everybody was mobilized to fight Nazi
Germany. That was the sum of it.
Ferraro: You mentioned that industries were mobilized, but were there any changes in your
everyday life, things you were perceiving around your town and school, as the mood was
changing?
Rhoads: Oh, it definitely was changing. Very definitely. We didn’t know Pearl Harbor would
be the last, it was just the beginning. Immediate changes were mobilization of factories and
getting arms built. I remember tires were very scarce. Women went to work after the men were
called to the service and that brought women into the workforce where women hadn’t worked
before, so it changed the whole structure of society, really. It never went back and have still
been in the workforce since, never went back. Lots of propaganda, from the other side, well
23
that’s always been there. One side says this and we won’t do that and then they do that and
criticize them.
Ferraro: What kinds of propaganda, if any, do you remember in the lead up to the war?
Rhoads: Well, there were accusations against Roosevelt right away that he knew Pearl Harbor
was going to be bombed and didn’t do anything about it. That was a big controversy. That’s the
biggest one I could think of. There was Tokyo Rose that passed propaganda out against, she was
trying to reach American soldiers, I suppose to stop them from wanting to fight, saying the good
guys were in Nazi Germany and that’s always a controversy. When you have a dispute like that.
That’s all I can think of, Alex. The most impressive thing to me, as I look back on it. Here we
are fighting a war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and prior to that we had Vietnam and the Korean War.
But World War II, everybody was involved. I recalled, thinking about this in grade school and I
guess I was in fifth, sixth grade, somewhere there. They started selling war stamps. Every kid
was to bring in a dime whenever they could and they bought these war stamps. When you got
eighteen dollars and something then they turned it into a war bond and you got twenty five
dollars. But everybody was involved in saving money supporting the war effort. Hollywood
people and prominent people would be out there selling war bonds to support the war and that
was a big thing. The fact that so many people were involved and they did buy those bonds to
support the war effort.
Ferraro: This was even prior to Pearl Harbor?
Rhoads: No this would be after Pearl Harbor.
Ferraro: Back to Pearl Harbor itself, do you have any memories of that day?
Rhoads: Oh, I sure do. It was a Sunday, and my dad had gone to an American Legion council
meeting, Clarion County council meeting. And we had the radio, of course, not everyone had
24
one, but he came in and he just looked grief-stricken. “Put the radio on to such and such a place,
the Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor” [her father said]. I think it was his distress, his concern that
scared me, as a kid. I was, what, twelve years old, but it was the stress of my father’s reaction
that scared me more than my own reaction. I couldn’t perceive that the Japs bombed something
over in the Pacific, what does that have to do with me? But I could tell it had a lot to do with me
because of my father’s reaction.
Ferraro: What were your feelings whenever you got that news, maybe as they relate to seeing
your father being so distressed?
Rhoads: Well, they talked about it and again, we had the radio to hear, my dad watched Lowell
Thomas every night of his life, I think, and that fifteen minutes of news. All these facts kept
coming in and it was an alarming thing, everybody was involved. I remember going to bed at
night for four or five years, praying that the war would come to an end, which the devastation
would stop. There had been so much of it, from North Africa to Europe and the Asian crunch
there. It was just a horrifying thought. Our little world was shaken, let’s say that. Our peace
and comfort and simple life was all altered by that declaration of war onto them and Hitler.
Ferraro: Being thirteen years old, you still had to go to school; everyday life obviously had to go
on.
Rhoads: Oh, that continued.
Ferraro: How, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, how did things change in your everyday life
outside of your family?
Rhoads: The schools, I think it became part of our education. The Champion family was across
the street from us, had five boys, and no radio. One of the older boys came over and wanted to
know if he could listen to the names when they were calling the draft, to use our radio. That was
25
impressive to me. You take a radio for granted, but if a neighbor doesn’t have one, and this older
man comes in and sits in your house and listens to these drawings to see if these numbers are
called, that’s impressive. He would have been, probably mid-thirties, that would be my guess, at
least in his thirties, waiting for his name to be called. He eventually did go, to the service, and
three of the five boys, one was too young and the other one had a 4F classification, I forget what
his physical problem was, but he didn’t qualify.
Ferraro: What were the feelings coming from your family and around the area? Were there
feelings of fear or anger directed toward. . .?
Rhoads: No it was more fear than anger. It may have been subliminal anger. No, it was fear.
Where is this going? So much of the world was involved already. You take Europe and
Northern Africa and China and Japan had been fighting for years and you get the Philippines and
it was just, World War II. Massive amount of countries involved. Every effort was put toward
the war: munitions, and ship building, and scarcities. I remember so clearly, being 13 I didn’t
know anything about nylon hose, but I had some friends who had older sisters and they couldn’t
buy nylon hose. Well, that was like the kiss of death, “I can’t buy nylon hose?” But they all
went to the war effort, parachutes, stuff like that. The rationing came, and we made out better
than some families, having so many in our family. But there were a lot of things you just
couldn’t get.
Ferraro: What were some of those things that were just gone compared to before the war?
Rhoads: Gasoline was rationed. Now we had the truck, and it had really a generous amount of
rationing tickets issued for gasoline. But anybody that just had a car, they gave you just enough
rationing stamps to do the bare essentials. There was no pleasure-riding. You didn’t get in the
car on Sunday and go someplace. There wasn’t enough gasoline. So that was a major thing, and
26
food was scarce. Meat was rationed. All kinds of things, and shoes. Again, with ten members
of the family, we made out ok. But if you had a poor member family, shoes could be a real
issue. You couldn’t get them or had to wait until the rationing stamp was valid to get a pair of
shoes, or sugar or meat or whatever. We raised much of our own food. That was definitely a
thing that effected. . .
[Tape 1, Side 1 ends]
[Tape 1, Side 2]
Ferraro: Can you tell us a little about the actual process of rationing, what your family had to do
to get things that you needed during this time?
Rhoads: Well, there were certain things you couldn’t buy without a rationing stamp. They
weren’t designated for anything in particular, but to buy gasoline, sugar, shoes, meat, and I
would imagine canned goods, whether that was rationed. Anyway, they were issued very
officially by the rationing board; I guess it was the county. I have a book in front of me; it gives
my name, my address, my age, my sex, my weight, and my height. It says book number 4
written in handwriting on it. I would have been the fourth member of my family. My parents,
one two, and then my oldest brother, three, and I would have been the fourth child. You couldn’t
get any of those items that were rationed without a stamp from the book. The price controls, I
had kind of forgotten about that until I looked at the book again, they had price controls on all
these items. Somebody couldn’t just charge whatever they wanted. The government set price
controls and you paid that. They warned you not to pay more than that. Again, they warned you
to take care of those books because to get a new one, when they were issued, you had to bring
the old one back. So it was a very tightly controlled process, this business of rationing.
Ferraro: Every member of your family received a rationing book?
27
Rhoads: Everybody got a book.
Ferraro: How many siblings did you have at this time, at the start of the war in forty one, forty
two?
Rhoads: I actually had six, well; my youngest brother was born in 1941, so yes, he would be just
a baby when the war broke out, so we had ten of them, all together. One for each member of the
family and my parents.
Ferraro: Did you, to spend these stamps, did you take them to the store in town? Provide them
with money and you would pay and use them?
Rhoads: Yes, they could be purchased. At that time we had two full service grocery stores.
Ferraro: The ration books were used for foodstuffs and supplies? Any particular set of supplies
that you needed or just food that they were used for?
Rhoads: Gasoline was included and I don’t know about tires. There was a big shortage of tires,
but I don’t remember if they were rationed, I don’t recall that. But I know rubber was used in the
war effort and that was a very limited commodity. So I would guess, what else is involved I
have forgotten.
Ferraro: Aside from the rationing book, what other sacrifices did your family have to make to
contribute to the war effort? Beyond going without some luxury items that you had.
Rhoads: Actually we didn’t buy many luxury items, with ten people in the family there wasn’t
much. But I actually remember the bond stamps. Saving stamps, I guess they were called, not
bond stamps. In the later years of the war, there was a fire tower in Strattanville proper not
outside, but in the borough, and we took turns manning that. What they were doing was looking
for planes flying over Strattanville, and I believe they had these at seven mile intervals. They
were manned, somebody take charge one day and then you recruit who was in charge of the fire
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tower. I was older, then, I don’t know exactly when they started, but it was a big deal. They had
a telephone and you called the operator, which was a little office in Strattanville and one ring you
got the operator and then she connected you with the place that you wanted to give this
information. We were watching basically for planes coming from the Cleveland area, over
Strattanville, on their way to the east coast. I remember one plane went over that we hadn’t
anticipated and we had to call it in. I had a creepy feeling that somebody was out to harm us,
and I think probably, and I could be wrong here, and it could be precautionary, that it was to see
if planes in the skies above us that shouldn’t be there. But it was a fascinating thing. If I had
signed up for two or three hours, have a friend come up and we had kind of fun, but you still had
to watch for those planes and report them if they went over that area. I think there was another
one in Corsica, which would be about six miles, seven miles away, but they had them that close
so there were a lot of them in the United States, watching for planes.
Ferraro: Who organized this, the watching the tower? Was it a county office?
Rhoads: I would presume it was a county office, but I don’t really remember that. There were a
lot of people involved and many of us were teenagers at that time. I thought I was a teenager,
maybe I should say that. It turned out to be scary in one sense that they felt threatened that we
had to do this and yet it was fun to have your friend come and spend those hours. It was fun.
Ferraro: From the start of the war you were thirteen, just about to turn fourteen?
Rhoads: No, I was twelve and I turned thirteen in December.
Ferraro: Throughout the course of the war you were a teenager. What were your relationships
like with the people in town, your friends? What was the situation like?
Rhoads: Well, the older guys were all going to the war, those that were old enough to go. My
older brother went in in his senior year, so there were many older ones in Strattanville, you know
29
doing the real war effort. One of those young men, he was probably ten years older, maybe a
little older; he was a prisoner of war. Now, in little old Strattanville, in rural Pennsylvania, that
was awesome. One of ours [emphasis hers] is a statistic now? And he eventually came back, one
of the Rensel boys, he eventually was released, I think he was in Germany. But he was captured
and that was awesome, to think that somebody we knew was a prisoner of war. Now I know
there were many, but in Strattanville proper, we were lucky that there was only one. Nobody
within the town itself was killed. There was one man just outside of Strattanville who had just
reached his destination overseas and he was killed on the day after he got there. He was not a
citizen of Strattanville, from just outside of Strattanville. We were lucky, probably, that that was
one of the only fatalities in our area.
Ferraro: How did news reach you and your family? You said the Pittsburgh paper came every
day still to you during this time?
Rhoads: Oh, yes, we read it until it quit publishing.
Ferraro: Your family was one of the few maybe who had a radio during this time so as you
heard war of how the war was progressing, either in the Pacific or in Europe, how did things
change as you received news? Did the mood change and could you perceive it during this time?
Rhoads: Well, there was a lot of, within the Strattanville community, you knew everybody. So
if somebody had a letter from their son that quickly was provided as information for the entire
community. But where so and so was, and sometimes they didn’t know for sure where they
were, but there was a lot of first hand information from the families of servicemen. There was a
lot of letter writing. I remember writing to one of the Champion boys who was, well, he was
next to the youngest and he went in, well, he was in for a lot of the war, two or three years of it.
They begged you to send letters, they send them today, school groups and so forth write letters to
30
the Iraq people serving in Iraq, so it was really promoted. When Lloyd [her older brother] went
in and people didn’t get letters maybe as often, they would say “Pat, write to this so and so.” I
would write to some of his buddies and other guys. I had a cousin stationed in London and I
wrote often to him during the war, there was a lot of that, so that you kept in touch with people
who are sent to this foreign land to fight for your safety.
Ferraro: You mentioned writing letters to your brother’s friends, but what kind of responses did
you get back from them?
Rhoads: Just tickled to death to get a letter. I remember one of the guys in the service, that were
Lloyd’s friends, I never knew them. It ended with the war, but they were so delighted to get any
letters. I think that still may exist, they do periodic letters for holidays, for servicemen overseas
and so forth. So that’s a good thing that that has continued. I can’t imagine being in a foreign
land and everybody got mail but you, so if you could contribute to somebody, momentarily, at
least, you felt you were doing something right.
Ferraro: Specifically about your brother Lloyd, where was he stationed during this time? You
mentioned he entered in his senior year of high school?
Rhoads: He went in the Navy and did his boot camp in Michigan or some place and was sent to
the west coast and eventually ended up in Guam. The war was winding down then; he was never
in any danger, really. That happened to a lot of boys; they were leaving high school and going
into the service. They automatically graduated, if they hadn’t finished their senior year, they
always got their diploma. That was part of the war effort too, a relaxation of standards, shall we
say.
Ferraro: How did your parents feel about your brother being in the Navy, stationed far away
from home, even just in the Pacific?
31
Rhoads: I think they took that as exactly what he should have been doing, that everybody should
support this war effort. My father of course had this experience earlier in World War I, but
everybody was doing it. It wasn’t just my brother it was many brothers and sons throughout the
country and everybody supported that effort.
Ferraro: Did you have other cousins or family members who were stationed overseas?
Rhoads: Yes, yes.
Ferraro: Any in particular that you communicated with? That you were close to at this time?
Rhoads: Cousin Glenn, as I mentioned earlier, he was in London and he wrote quite often. I
have a postcard here from London from him, but I saved some of those things, kind of fun to
look back on.
Ferraro: You mentioned that toward the later years of the war, when you were in high school,
that most of the guys had been drafted so you obviously still went to high school during this
time? Were you working during this time as well?
Rhoads: Oh yes, I spent my freshman summer, the summer after my freshman year, and I
worked every year. Just to take care of myself, the way we were raised, next to the oldest, I felt I
had to be self-sufficient so I went to work.
Ferraro: Where did you work?
Rhoads: I worked in Clarion. You walked back and forth, it was only three miles. Sometimes it
was very cold and once in a while my dad would come and get me, but that was what you did.
There were lots of jobs you could get.
Ferraro: Where did you work, specifically?
Rhoads: I worked at a drug store, making banana splits and sodas, that kind of thing. Probably
my first real money I ever made, so to speak. During the war, a friend of mine, they had a
32
Sylvania factory in Brookville; I was going to Clarion-Limestone, which was about twelve miles
away. We were allowed to get out of school early and the bus picked us up to school and
brought us to Brookville at the Sylvania plant, where they made filaments for light bulbs. We
worked there, I started before school was out, and I think I worked there that whole summer. I
was fifteen, sixteen, there were so many jobs to be done. Like I said, they let us out of school; it
was part of the war effort. I’m not exactly sure what those were exactly, I know it was filaments,
but where they fit into the war effort I have forgotten. But again everybody was mobilized.
Now, today, can you imagine a sixteen year old being excused from school to go and work in a
factory? But we did it. We had a bus right there, I don’t know where the other people on the bus
came from, if it was Clarion, or someplace, but we weren’t the only ones on the bus. At night we
would get back on the bus and they would drop us off where we lived.
Ferraro: Was this effort to go to work in Brookville, was that effort set up by the government or
the company themselves contacted looking for young people to come and work? Who organized
the effort?
Rhoads: Well, I’m not sure of that. I would imagine it came from the government basically and
was then turned over to the factory involved with the war orders. Sylvania, called Sylvania plant
then, was big in this area then. They’re all gone now. There were factories in Detroit and
someplace, several around. They did eventually make the light bulbs but I remember it was very
tedious work, working the assembly line and you had better be alert because if you screwed up,
they would let you know! [laughing] Yet, again, it forced you to grow up a little bit too. But
that’s how comprehensive the war effort was, in my mind. I know there have been other wars,
but there was an all-out pressure to do it and fight back quick and that’s would that would’ve
been too.
33
Ferraro: How much did you make working at the Sylvania plant?
Rhoads: You know, Alex, I couldn’t tell you. I know I bought clothes I couldn’t have afforded
before: a dress here, pair of shoes there.
Ferraro: Compared to, you mentioned working at the soda fountain?
Rhoads: Oh it was better money, oh yeah.
Ferraro: How long did you do it, just one summer working at the Sylvania plant in Brookville?
Rhoads: You know, I think so. We started in the spring or late winter, and I think I worked the
rest of the summer at Sylvania. Got to know the stores in Brookville, you know, it was kind of
fun.
Ferraro: You mentioned the sacrifices that you and your family had to make, but how did your
schooling changing during this time? How did that change? Being in high school was obviously
different, but what sacrifices did the schools have to make to keep providing you with an
education in addition to the sacrifices you had to make at home?
Rhoads: There was a shortage of teachers. Now, I suppose the male teachers were in the service,
I wasn’t thinking too much about that at the time. Today a teacher has to be qualified in what
they are teaching, but they hired a teacher back in those days, one was a home economics teacher
and one was the business teacher, typing and bookkeeping. Well, if they didn’t have a phys. ed.
teacher then that person was drafted to teach a phys. ed. class in addition to their home
economics or business courses. Now, today that’s unthinkable. You have to have a qualified
teacher. I came into Clarion-Limestone as a freshman, all the other girls had been there since
seventh grade, so I didn’t have the background in some of those areas that they had, like sports or
phys. ed. I came in not knowing a darn thing because we didn’t have phys. ed. in Strattanville
[laughing] so that was challenging. But anyway I think that would be a lack of male teachers. I
34
think there were a couple of older male teachers there, but the rest were all, a couple of them
from Pittsburgh, but that tells me that almost anyone could get a job in the school district at that
time in the forties.
Ferraro: Do you remember any changes to the curriculum to deal with the war? Was there any
increased focus on learning about the day to day, the news from the warfront or learning about
European history to kind of get a background?
Rhoads: I don’t think so. I don’t think that there were any changes there because they had a
balanced curriculum before the war. We had a lot of current events in civics class particularly,
so that could have been enhanced. But other than that I don’t think there were many changes to
the curriculum in high school because of the war.
Ferraro: Your friends that you went to school with at this time, where they also from
Strattanville or from the larger Clarion-Limestone?
Rhoads: Oh, from the larger, very much larger community. Clarion Township, Strattanville
Borough; Clarion Township goes all around Clarion [Borough]. Now Clarion [Borough] did not
come to Clarion-Limestone, but almost as far south as New Bethlehem [ten miles away]. It
covered a vast geographical area.
Ferraro: Any friends in particular that you were close to during that time or what was your
relationship like with your closest friends during the war years, in your high school years?
Rhoads: I don’t think it was any different than any other group. You mixed where you could,
academically and socially. But as I say, it was from a vast geographical area that those kids were
pulled from. I think Clarion-Limestone still pulls from a vast area. That wouldn’t be any
different.
35
Ferraro: By the time you were in high school, what were the other students coming in your class
year, in terms of wealth or resources?
Rhoads: Wealth didn’t exist. Some had a little bit more than others; I don’t recall a lot of the
boys having cars at that time.
Ferraro: Were there many boys left even in high school who were not in the war?
Rhoads: Yes, some of them chose to leave early and they weren’t drafted, if I recall correctly,
like my brother who went in senior year, were not drafted. I think you wanted to choose which
branch you went into so that’s why you volunteered. Now, later, I graduated [from high school]
in ‘46, and the war was winding down in ‘45 when he went in. You knew the war was winding
down.
Ferraro: How did your family know the war was winding down? There was obviously news
coming of continued victories on both fronts but how did things kind of change in forty five?
Rhoads: Well, they had, [General Dwight D.] Eisenhower and the Normandy invasion that
proved to be a disaster. By this time, they had stopped the bombings somewhat in London and
now we are attacking the Nazis in Germany, bombing several of those cities greatly. So you get
a few successes and then I think they were driven out of France, if I remember correctly, the
Nazis were driven out of France and forced to back up. Eisenhower’s D-Day invasion, not
Normandy, that was not good, but after that with a few successes you could see that the end
might be coming. Wasn’t it April or May of V-E Day [in 1945]? What a celebration, then we
had V-J Day in August I believe, when Japan agreed to surrender. Now that was the biggie. It
was one thing to get Hitler under control in Germany but you had to contain Japan so when
Japan finally surrendered there was a party all over Clarion, everybody was just so relieved after
that long, exhausting war, and it still didn’t last as long as the Iraq war.
36
Ferraro: You mentioned hearing about General Eisenhower, what were you learning about the
bigger figures of the war as they were gaining their fame, people like Eisenhower, or famous
generals or other famous people in the war?
Rhoads: Actually, I don’t think they released a lot of the information about the failures. We
have heard it since about the London bombings, that was played up. When you went to the
movies the first ten minutes was the war bulletin, a feature. Every movie had this news shown
on film, what was happening throughout the world with this very dignified voice in the
background just trying to scare the living daylights out of you how bad it was [laughing]. But
that voice was very memorable at that time, I don’t remember the name of the person. So, the
highlights were released. The Normandy invasion was a bust but as they pushed the Nazis from
France the bombings switched from London and the blackouts there to Germany and bombing a
couple of their cities very successfully. Then you knew that it could be winding down. But it
was pretty bad at the beginning. They had a head start on us.
Ferraro: What were the feelings either toward Japanese-Americans or German-Americans at the
time? Were there any changes in feelings toward those groups of people that you knew of?
Rhoads: They had the internments in California of the Japanese-Americans [emphasis hers]
citizens that because they Japanese they were confined? That was cruel, it was scary. My last
name was Seigworth. Now that’s a German name. I secretly wondered is somebody hating me
because I had a German name because the Germans were greatly hated, just vilified. It never
came to that. It was a childhood fear. But if you think about it, wasn’t that a normal reaction
after you heard about the Japanese-Americans being confined? You have a German name, are
they going to criticize you?
37
Ferraro: Back to the victory days in 1945, do you have any specific memories of those victory
days? You mentioned being in Clarion at the time?
Rhoads: Well that was the hub, the courthouse was in Clarion, the college [Clarion State
College, now Clarion University of Pennsylvania] was in Clarion, shopping was in Clarion,
shopping was centralized in town to. So you went to Clarion for big events. I don’t have
specific memories about V - E Day; I know there was a big celebration, but Victory in Japan
Day. Everybody that could get out was on the streets on Clarion, it was like the biggest parade
you have ever seen in your life. Like when the Steelers win the Super Bowl, they show you
pictures of celebrations in downtown Pittsburgh, that’s what Clarion was like. Everybody was
just yelling and screaming and hollering, “we won we won we won!” It was a very big event.
Ferraro: On that particular day were you working in Clarion or there with your family? Why
were you in Clarion on that day?
Rhoads: I had friends that lived in Clarion and a lot of times, we’d make arrangements to meet
in Clarion for a movie or whatever. I met friends in there and that’s my biggest memory. I don’t
think I was working that day. By that time, I was working at the diner, that was my senior year,
but I don’t think I was working that day. Anyway, I obviously met friends in Clarion and that
was common. You didn’t have transportation, so you took a ride with some kid from
Strattanville or you walked, you just didn’t think anything of it. But I met friends there and we
spent the night celebrating. It was just one big party, that Victory in Japan Day.
Ferraro: Did you meet any returning veterans from the war?
Rhoads: Oh my there were veterans and I think they were on leave, many of them, probably not
discharged but close to discharge, yes. There were veterans everywhere. Clarion and partying, I
met your grandfather that day and he didn’t let it go so I ended up marrying him [laughing].
38
Ferraro: The day that you met him, was that the day of one of the victory celebrations?
Rhoads: Victory in Japan Day. [Correction: after the interview had ended, my grandmother and
I discussed this connection between V - J Day and she and my grandfather meeting and this date
is not correct. She did not meet him until summer of 1946, because they were married in June
1947 and had not known each other for a full year. She does know that she met him on the day
of a huge party in downtown Clarion]
Ferraro: He had been back from --?
Rhoads: He had been stationed in the Navy on the West Coast, wore his uniform. I do know he
had that on, a lot of them did. I expect that at that time, I don’t know what the regulations were,
that most of the guys had their uniforms on. Whether that was required, I’m not sure.
Ferraro: What did he tell you about his time overseas? He did not see any combat that I know
of?
Rhoads: No. He was on a ship that somebody in the family has a picture of. He never talked too
much about it. He wasn’t political, that’s what everybody was doing; he had a lot of friends that
were the same age, close to the same age. I don’t think in hindsight, I think it was just the thing
that you did at that time. Everybody did it and you did too. I don’t think it was a serious “I must
do this” kind of thing with him. I don’t think so, it wasn’t with my older brother either. It was
what you were expected to do. You could volunteer or get drafted any way. You did so many
years and you were out.
Ferraro: The mood, obviously in the aftermath of V-J Day and V - E Day was very positive?
Did things change, literally overnight or how did you see the progression from a sacrificing
economy to being very positive? How did the mood change after the victories?
39
Rhoads: I don’t think it was an immediate return to any normalcy. There were still a lot of
shortages and restrictions on life. I think most of the servicemen were gradually being released.
Your grandfather was released, it seems to me he had to go back for his discharge, you had a
leave and then you go back and were discharged. I’m not certain about that but it was typical.
They weren’t all released because the war was over, there was still a lot of clean-up to do. In
fact, my brother was in Guam, the war was winding down, he never saw any combat, but they
still had a big military compound in Guam. I don’t know whether it was dispersal or equipment
what, but there were still a lot of guys stationed overseas. I would say the same of now. They
are still in Japan, still in Germany after all these years, but it was a gradual thing. But when the
veterans started to come back, where were the jobs? They wanted to work in the factories so the
government instituted what they called the 52-20 club. Every veteran, could take a year, and
draw $20 a week for 52 weeks and then you were expected to get a job or go to school. Then
they had the GI bill which allowed those people to go to school on the government. So the
college’s built temporary huts for veterans that were married to come in and bring their family
with them and stayed on campus and get their degree. All by the government, so that was a big
deal and that helped with the economy. That’s why you had so many graduating in the early
fifties from college because of the GI bill. That 52-20 club always fascinated me and really they
were kind of ridiculed, “Oh look at him he’s on the 52-20 club!” He get’s $20 a week to buy
cigarettes and didn’t even look for a job. But it was a transition back into society and then the
boom started in the early fifties with the housing development and people marrying and having
babies and so forth.
Ferraro: It was difficult for veterans coming home from the war to find work in the months after
it?
40
Rhoads: I think it was but there was an element too after this war that they were willing to draw
on this 52-20 club and just take a year off. Then the college, they all, many of them went to
college and there was a boom there.
Ferraro: What was the later attitude like toward veterans as they came back? A sense of
admiration, respect?
Rhoads: Admiration, respect, nothing but respect for those men. Of course you asked each
individual what was their job in the Navy, in the services, so that was kind of fascinating, too.
One guy I dated at that time, and that was my senior year, had been a bombardier on an airplane.
That was fascinating, but he took the 52-20 club and then started college. Never did finish and I
always thought what a waste. He was obviously very bright.
Ferraro: It was very common for veterans to take the GI Bill?
Rhoads: To go to college? Very definitely. Quonset huts, I don’t know what that name means
today, but the college [Clarion University] as we know today has many new buildings, but there
were all these stupid looking huts that families could live in while they were going to school.
Many of the guys did that.
Ferraro: Coming back from the war, the mood was very positive, was there an inclination for
people to get married quickly? Did people get married immediately after the husband came
back?
Rhoads: I know they did. Some were married during the war. One of the girls in my class had
married an upperclassman in the service. That was awesome: she’s married, a woman and she’s
still in my class at school? That was awesome; we couldn’t figure that one out. But that was not
uncommon for them to marry before they went overseas. Some of them waited and some of
them never came back. Many from Strattanville waited until their guy came back. There was
41
lots of emotional stress on couples too, as they came back. The Baby Boomers who were born
right after the war, official Baby Boomers.
Ferraro: Aside from the returning veterans that you knew, how did you learn about the personal
stories of the war at the time? Was it something you were interested in learning about? From
hearing from your brother, from others?
Rhoads: They didn’t talk much, outside of stating their job, like I mentioned that bombardier on
the Air Force. That was all you would get out of them. They never talked about we bombed
such and such. It never came out. I suppose some of them talked, but none to my knowledge. I
wrote letters to Lloyd [her older brother] and knew what his duties were pretty much, and his
attitude. Most of them didn’t have much to say or maybe I didn’t ask the right questions, I don’t
know. At that age who is greatly interested in what they did? I suppose my interest wasn’t as
great as what it should have been.
Ferraro: What did grandpa do in his years coming back from the war? What did he do? Did he
take advantage of the GI Bill?
Rhoads: Your grandfather? No. His father wanted him to go into the bank as a clerk and he said
he couldn’t see himself working inside all day so he didn’t do that and worked at a gas station
and he stayed there a couple years until he bought that business out in Limestone [Township].
Ferraro: As you were graduating from high school, what were your future plans at that point?
Rhoads: Not what they should have been. When I was still working at the diner, my father came
in one day and told me he would borrow the money so I could go to college. Well, I had taken
care of myself since ninth grade, clothes and everything and said no. Shortsighted, I know. I
thought I’m not going through that after four years of high school. So, I really didn’t have any.
Most girls were getting married. Careers for women were not that big at that time. I had a
42
couple cousins who had been to college and graduated and taught school. But I didn’t see myself
in that role. [Note: After her youngest child, started school in the late 1960s, she started, and
graduated from, Clarion State College, now known as Clarion University of Pennsylvania, with
Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, teaching elementary school for 25 years until her retirement in
1993]
Ferraro: Other girls your age, that was common for them? Few pursued higher education?
Rhoads: I would say very few, very few.
Ferraro: What were the opportunities available to girls graduating from high school, in the
aftermath of the war?
Rhoads: Well, you could work in the food service business; you could get a job as a secretary,
not highly skilled but secretary, work in the bank. Owens-Illinois hired a lot of young girls, and
they stayed there a long time. It was good money. Probably the best money around.
Ferraro: Had the overall role of women changed coming back from the war? You mentioned
that men returned and it was hard to find jobs? Did women keep those jobs [they had taken
during the war]?
Rhoads: No, many went back to the home but some never did. They had been out in the world
and made their own way and that was a revolution in itself that women had found a place of their
own, that they could make their own living. I don’t think it ever returned truly. For years after
the war, for years after the war, it wasn’t what it is today. There were more women working then
you had ever dreamed possible. The idea that you were still supposed to stay home and raise
your own children, that was still very much in effect.
Ferraro: Did you know any women who had entered the workforce during the course of the war
and either stayed there or went back home after the men came home?
43
Rhoads: The ones I knew returned to their wife or mother role. Most of them had children, but
the ones I knew without children still took back that role.
Ferraro: Do you have any other memories of experiences during the war that come to mind after
the war?
Rhoads: Well, we had the blackouts during the war. This God-awful siren would blow. It was
not like any other siren you had ever heard and that was the indication that you get your lights
out and cover the windows so that absolutely no light shined out the windows. That was similar
to our fire tower watching for the planes. It was still kind of the effort that even way back in
Western Pennsylvania we were still having these blackouts. It was precautionary, it was
something we did and we took it seriously.
Ferraro: Did you ever feel there was a real threat to your family’s livelihood? That something
like that was actually going to happen or was it just a general being prepared for it?
Rhoads: I think just general preparedness. However that threat was always over your head
because of the magnitude of the war. I took it all very seriously being a young person. It was
very serious stuff, the fact that they mobilized county after county to do this, there had to some
reason for it, fear in the background, at least.
Ferraro: Back to the aftermath of the war, what was the outlook like for the future, having
defeated both Japan and Germany? The national outlook, maybe the outlook you had for how
things were going to proceed from this point?
Rhoads: Before the war was over, there was a lot of criticism of Roosevelt, Potstown [Potsdam]
specifically. They felt he had given too much, he and Churchill, to Stalin. That they sat back and
let Stalin enter Berlin before the Americans and English go in, even though the Americans had
bombed successfully. To put Stalin in, they let him come in and that’s when you saw the
44
division of Germany as an ultimate result of the war. There was a lot of fear, I guess, of Stalin,
and they way that the Russians looked at things. Ultimately, that resulted in the Cold War, that
last from fifty to ninety, forty years of the Cold War. You’ve probably read about that or maybe
lived through some of it with the Berlin Wall, when it finally came down it brought the Russians
down eventually and they lost their whole empire there, all those states. So that went on a long
time and I would say that was immediately after the war ended. This rivalry with the Russian
country, the U.S.S.R., and the Americans, and France, and England. That was a very long,
ongoing feud, really, billions of dollars spent on armaments to fight them off if they ever did do
anything. Eventually, of course, Russia collapsed, but it was a long time. So that fear was there
for a long, long time.
Ferraro: You as an individual, what was your outlook like? Through the years of sacrifice of the
war, growing up in the Great Depression, what was your outlook as a teenager, as a young
woman?
Rhoads: They had a draft when the Korean War started and there was a big amount of
conversation about calling back veterans to the Korean War. That scared me because I had just
been married and Tom [her husband] was a veteran, so are they going to call him back? His
mother thought I was being silly, but again when the national government says they were going
to recall many of these vets, I was concerned. Then we had that and we had Vietnam, which was
another disaster and it’s been a long history of wars that we wonder why we fought.
Ferraro: You were married in June of 1946?
Rhoads: 1947, yes.
Ferraro: The outlook was good, you were positive about where the country was going?
45
Rhoads: I think so, until the Korean War came up and then you raised your eyebrows. What’s
coming now? I think so, we had used the bomb and brought Japan to its knees and why not be
optimistic?

Oral History Collection
To read the transcript and listen to the audio of this interview at the same time, first download
the pdf of the transcript by clicking on the link at the top of this screen. The
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Special Collections
Musselman Library
Interview with
Patricia Seigworth Rhoads
Interviewer: Alex Ferraro
Interview Date: April 29, 2010
M. PATRICIA SEIGWORTH RHOADS ORAL HISTORY
HIST 300: Historical Methods
Alex Ferraro
April 29, 2010
2
When I was deciding between interviewing someone in my family or another individual
whom I was not as familiar with, I chose to interview my grandmother because I felt that having
a written and verbal account of the first twenty years of her life would be of greater value to my
family both now and in the future. I knew going into the interview that my grandmother did not
have any grand stories about storming the beaches of Normandy or of nursing the sick in the
Pacific, but that her account of growing up during the war on a farm in a very rural region of
northwestern Pennsylvania would be a very different narrative to the familiar topics of World
War II. As I have learned over the past several weeks when reading about the New Social
History Movement, there are often stories outside of the mainstream accounts that can provide
great insight into everyday life during the major events in world history. At the end of my
interview, I came away knowing that while my grandmother did not fall into the “great white
men who did great things” side of history, her experience during the war was, in many ways, just
as insightful to me as any battlefield account would have been.
My grandmother and I have always been exceptionally close, largely due to the fact that
she lives just across town from me and to the fact that she and my mother have an especially
close relationship, she having raised my mother on her own after my grandparents divorced.
Going into the interview, I did not have any barriers of familiarity to break down as did others
who interviewed complete and total strangers, but I was surprised to note how our relationship
seemed to change once the tape recorder was clicked on. It seemed to me that once that
happened, our twenty-plus year relationship seemed to become much less casual, more of a
formal discussion of history rather than the casual conversations we are so used to. One of the
drawbacks to interviewing my grandmother is that, while I learned details that I have never
known before, I knew the general framework of her story and what had happened in the first
3
twenty or so years of her life. I knew the important dates of her life, number of siblings, parents,
and her relationship with my late grandfather, but I did not know the details that made her story
more than just a mirror image of so many other young girls growing up in rural Pennsylvania in
that time. To compensate for this, I had to work harder to ensure that the often important
background information was not left out, so that the reader would be able to gain just as much
information as I would have had she been a total stranger to me.
As I was transcribing the interview, I noticed many small facts and phrases that I had not
noticed enough to take the time to clarify with her during the interview. Terms like “mother of
vinegar” (a jelly-like substance used to produce vinegar that was left in the barrel at the store),
“Tokyo Rose” (propaganda used by the Japanese to sway American troops toward their cause),
and “Lowell Thomas” (radio broadcaster in the 1930s and 40s) were completely new to me, but
they proved to be details that helped me gain an understanding of my grandmother’s memories
of the time we were discussing. Of the many detailed stories that I learned for the first time, my
favorites were the story of her signing up to sit at the top of the fire tower to watch for planes (as
if the Germans or Japanese would attack rural Pennsylvania first) and her account of my great-grandfather
coming home from an American Legion meeting on the day Pearl Harbor was
attacked with an unprecedented, in my grandmother’s mind, look of grief on his normally
emotionless (in the context of 1940s society) face.
Just as Allesandro Portelli tells the story of people in the Italian village where Luigi
Trastulli died in the midst of a NATO protest changing their story over time to account for the
importance of the events, my grandmother had adjusted one important story to fit within the
larger historical context. She had originally told me that she and my grandfather had met in the
middle of a huge celebration, which at the time of our interview she had concluded was Victory
4
in Japan Day in August, 1945. However, as we later discussed, she knows that she did not meet
him until 1946 because they had not known each other for more than a year before their marriage
in June of 1947. I can only imagine that she had combined a very important event in her life
(meeting my grandfather for the first time, which she knew was on the day of a big celebration)
with the enormous celebration on V-J Day in August 1945. While neither she nor I have been
able to come up with the big celebration that was happening on the day she met my grandfather
in 1946, I am interested in finding out just what happened that day that she would associate so
closely with the festivities on V-J Day. While this is a minor fumble in the context of a much
larger recollection of the events before, and during, World War II, it further demonstrates the
flexibility of an individual’s memory and the possible tendency for any person, not just my
grandmother, to want to connect important personal events with important national events.
In the end, I learned a great deal more about the details of my grandmother’s life before
and during World War II, creating a document that will be of invaluable use to my family and
me for years to come.
I affirm that I have upheld the highest principles of honesty and integrity in my academic work
and have not witnessed a violation of the Honor Code.
5
PATRICIA SEIGWORTH RHOADS Oral History
[Tape 1 Side 1]
Ferraro: It is March 12, 2010, and I am sitting here with Patricia Seigworth Rhoads in [the dining
room of her home at 28 Rose St. in] Brookville, Pennsylvania and were are going to talk with her
about her life before, and including her experiences in World War II. So to start off, could you
tell us when and where you were born?
Rhoads: I was born in Strattanville, Clarion County, Pennsylvania, in Western Pennsylvania.
Ferraro: And what date was that?
Rhoads: December 24, 1928.
Ferraro: And who were your parents and what did they do for a living?
Rhoads: My parents were Clem Seigworth and Bess Seigworth, and my father cleaned out gas
wells, in business for himself, and my mother is a former teacher, and we knew that as we were
growing up that she had been a teacher!
Ferraro: How many siblings did you have?
Rhoads: I had seven; there were eight of us all together.
Ferraro: You were the oldest? Next to oldest?
Rhoads: Next to the oldest of eight.
Ferraro: What impact did your father’s work situation have on the family whenever you were
growing up? Was he around? Was he home?
Rhoads: Oh, he was home every night, yes, and he cleaned out gas wells in probably a three
county area around Clarion County.
Ferraro: What was the relationship like between your parents that you were able to know during
this time?
6
Rhoads: Well, I think they respected each other’s intelligence, and they struggled during the
Depression, like many others, for survival; food and shelter and so forth. But actually looking
back, we had more than many families in that small community. They were miners, basically.
We had a car, a truck, and a telephone, and many did not have those luxuries in the thirties.
Ferraro: What was your extended family like? Did you have much relationship with them, with
your grandparents, with other cousins?
Rhoads: Yes, it was a good relationship there, particularly with my mother’s parents, my
grandparents on her side. But my father came from a large family so there was lots of interaction
among his brothers and sisters.
Ferraro: What was your relationship like with your siblings growing up?
Rhoads: Well, I was the first girl, second born, but the first girl, and there were four boys, so I
got the house chores [laughing] and we never had scrabbles [scraps], or fights, like many siblings
did. We were just in the mode to survive, and I think that was predominant, even though at the
time I didn’t realize that. But we raised a lot of our own food and there were chores for
everybody, and being the only girl there for a number of years, I cleaned up the kitchen; I helped
with the cooking and so forth. So it was very congenial, really.
Ferraro: What were your responsibilities like around the house compared to those of your
brothers growing up?
Rhoads: Well they did the outside work: the milking of the cows, the bringing in of hay, tending
the gardens. I had the kitchen work and took care of the younger babies. My youngest brother, I
changed more diapers of his than my mother did. I was the second mother, to put it bluntly.
7
Ferraro: Compared to the rest of the families in and around Strattanville, what was your family
life? Did you feel that you had more than other families did, did you feel that the relationships
you had were different from them? How did your family compare to other families in the area?
Rhoads: I think in later years it dawned on me that we had more than many, just like I
mentioned, the telephone, truck and the car. We always had our own food; there was no
scramble for food. We didn’t live from paycheck to paycheck like many of the miners did at that
time. So, maybe we had less stress in our lives, perhaps, because of raising our food and our
parents were both very frugal. I didn’t feel we were better off, but in later years I realized that
many of them didn’t have telephones or even cars, let alone a truck and a car. So I guess we
were comfortably well off.
Ferraro: Tell us a little bit about your homestead. I know you lived several different places
growing up. Where did you first live and tell a little about that?
Rhoads: Our first house that I can recall, and I was very young, was directly across from the
Methodist church in Strattanville. Then, as the babies kept coming, we outgrew that house. So
my parents rented a house up on Main Street that had more room. In the meantime, they had
bought some property on the edge of Strattanville to build a house. That was started by I think,
1935. It was piecemeal, you did what you could afford and it took a while. We moved in 1937,
and the inside was not finished, but it was big enough to hold the family, the larger family by
that time. There was more land to have a bigger garden, and that was when the animals came
too. There was a small barn there that the cows were kept in and chicken coops that the chickens
could survive in. So we had more room after we built that house out there on the road.
Ferraro: What year was the house finished that you moved in to?
8
Rhoads: 1937. It wasn’t finished. There was no plastering done, just the bare shell, enough that
we could live in it. No furnace, coal stove in the kitchen and a fireplace in the living room, and
that was the basic heat. The furnace wasn’t put in until many years later.
Ferraro: What was the process of building the house like for your family? Did you watch the
house being built? What did your father do to help the building? Did you hire people? Did your
family do it itself?
Rhoads: My father hired a contractor in Corsica [10 miles east of Strattanville] that did the main
building, but he had bought an old school building and much of the lumber was saved out of that
and some of the stonework was used for the basement. So a lot of that was hauled in by my
father because he had the truck. But the basic structure was done by these two contractors that
he had hired. Again, it was not, you hired them today and they finished three months or a year
from now. It was kind of piecemeal, as you could afford to do it.
Ferraro: What was the community that you grew up in like? What was Strattanville like during
your childhood years, up to the start of the war?
Rhoads: Well, we had a school building by the late thirties that had first grade through twelfth.
All in this large building, and later the high school students were sent to another community, so
we didn’t have high school in Strattanville anymore. They were sent to another community,
specifically Clarion-Limestone [school district, named for Clarion and Limestone Townships,
which surround the borough of Strattanville] for their high school education. They had first
through eighth grade until I was ready for my freshman year, and then we were transferred to
another community. But that school building was then replaced and a beautiful new building
was built and it housed one through eighth grade, the new building. Eventually, they totally
merged with Clarion-Limestone School [District] and they no long taught anybody in
9
Strattanville. But that took a period of twelve years at least, until there was no longer anyone
taught in Strattanville. The community was made up of a lot of miners. There wasn’t a lot of
turnover in the people. Many of the people were poor, you could tell that. It was a very healthy
community to grow up in, really.
Ferraro: What were the main industries in the town? Did people travel to go to work? What was
the location in relation to Pittsburgh or Clarion, some of the larger towns in the area?
Rhoads: It would be about 90 miles north of Pittsburgh. Mining was the major industry, there
was some lumbering around. By the late thirties, there were a lot of people employed at the glass
plant in Clarion, Owens-Illinois Glass Plant, which is three miles away. The mines were
diminishing by the thirties, too, so there were a lot of people employed in Clarion at the Owens-
Illinois Glass Plant.
Ferraro: So obviously a very rural area?
Rhoads: Very rural, very rural.
Ferraro: What about agriculture? Were there many farmers, people who worked in town and
were merchants and that type of thing? What were the businesses in town, in Strattanville itself?
Rhoads: We had our own post office, and there were two to three grocery stores over the years.
Of course, down to none, now in later years. At one time, everything you needed you could buy
in the small town of Strattanville. Population was around four to five hundred, basically.
Everybody knew everybody.
Ferraro: Were you a member of a church during this time? Which church were you a member
of?
Rhoads: I went to the Methodist church, and was married eventually in the Methodist Church in
Strattanville. Still belong to a Methodist Church [laughing]. There were a couple other
10
churches. Baptist, if I recall correctly, and a holy-rollers, or something to that effect. It was a
much louder, a good distance from the basic Methodist church that we had in Strattanville. It
was just a different type of people that were attracted to it.
Ferraro: Being in a rural area, most families were Protestant. Were they Methodist as well or
what was the breakdown religiously?
Rhoads: I would say most of them were Protestant at that time, in those twenty years we are
talking about, the thirties and forties.
Ferraro: Any other religions? Any Catholics or Jewish people, other religions?
Rhoads: No Jewish people. Later years, mid-forties, there were some Catholics. Of course they
went to church in Clarion, which was three miles away. Just a few of them though, not a whole
lot.
Ferraro: What was your family’s involvement with the church? Obviously attending services
every Sunday. What role did the church play in your life growing up?
Rhoads: I would say very important. In fact, I have a picture that shows me on the cradle roll [a
list of those new children baptized into the church] of the Methodist church in Strattanville in
April of 1929 I was on the cradle roll, so my life began there. We all went to the Sunday school
programs and church, but Sunday school was very important in my life. We had a good
foundation there. Local people did the teaching and it was just a good thing.
Ferraro: What about the political affiliation of people in town? What role did politics play in
either your family or the town in general?
Rhoads: By the forties, I would say basically the town was strong on the Republican side. My
family was Democrat and big supporters of President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt. But many
weren’t impressed with him.
11
Ferraro: Do you have any memories of political discourse between your father or people he
worked with or knew? Any among your family?
Rhoads: My mother and father were very active in the Democrat Party in Strattanville itself and
Clarion County. My father had a couple brothers that he could have big arguments about the
Democrat versus Republican. Of course, they loved to criticize Eleanor Roosevelt at that time
and they did freely. But basically, my family supported Roosevelt, whatever he did. I have
often laughed; I don’t know how funny this is to someone else. My father had a big roll-top desk
that he worked out of. On our desk, we didn’t have a picture of Jesus Christ. We had Franklin
Roosevelt’s picture on that desk, framed! [Laughing]
Ferraro: Your parents’ political affiliation obviously played a big role growing up, for you?
Rhoads: I admired them for their role. I remember one time my mother had an argument with
her brother-in-law about who they were supporting for one office or another and I always
thought that was amusing. She didn’t back down, she took her stance, it was Grace Sloan
[Democratic politician originally from Clarion County, Pennsylvania. She later served as
Pennsylvania State Treasurer and State Auditor General] they were arguing about. My mother
supported her and Uncle George [brother of Clem Seigworth] didn’t. That was a mild
interruption in their relationship, really.
Ferraro: What memories do you have of national issues in the thirties until the time you were a
teenager and the war started? What role did the national issues that were happening have on
your family?
Rhoads: Remember now, in the thirties, I wasn’t very old. But, my father had served in World
War I and he was greatly interested in the storm coming in Europe. That weighed heavily on
him. I think it would be 1937, I was about eight years old, we got a Pittsburgh paper daily and
12
he insisted that I start a scrapbook; saving the headlines form those papers as the war progressed.
Czechoslovakia, Poland, and so forth in central Europe. Of course Neville Chamberlain out of
England and how he appeased Hitler supposedly and that was why we were behind the eight ball
when we got into the war. So, he was very conscious of it, and I think he passed that on to me
that it was something I needed to be aware of.
Ferraro: Your father was a World War I veteran? Can you tell us a little bit about how his
service affected him for the rest of his life that you can remember?
Rhoads: Oh, I think it affected him the rest of his life. He was one of the older vets called. He
wasn’t married at the time, maybe twenty six or something when he went in. I have a letter that
he had written from the camp where he did his initial training before he went overseas. At that
time, people didn’t travel to Europe unless they were very wealthy. So, here are all these young
men from the country being shipped over to France to fight this war and he was only in a year,
but I think it left a great impression on him. Here’s America and we were living in the country
and everything was so cozy and all of a sudden we are thrust into the war in France. He was in
the engineering corps that built roads, but it just made a big impression and he passed that on to
the older kids in our family, there was no question about it.
Ferraro: Were there other veterans in your family? Older cousins, uncles?
Rhoads: Not in World War I, no. But in World War II, that’s a whole different story. It was
more involved too, lasted longer, so there were a lot of relatives, lots of neighbors serving.
Relatives, people you knew. My older brother went in toward the end of the war, so yes it
caused you to be aware of and involved. When you were with people that close to you in the
war.
13
Ferraro: What is the earliest memory you have growing up? What is one of the first things you
can remember that really has stuck in your mind since? Do you remember how old you were?
Rhoads: I suppose the most impressive thing that happened: my father fell off of his drilling rig
and broke his back and there were a number of them bringing him home and laying him on a
couch, pulling those heavy boots off. He was in agony. That was a rough winter. We survived
it. His father came and bought the boys a wagon. We still lived on Main Street and my father
had a lady friend who was like a mother to him, she was an older lady and she had a big house
with a big basement, so the potatoes that we raised were stored up in her house. Well when my
dad broke his back, the boys weren’t that old at the time and the boys had no way to get the bulk
of them down to our house, which was four blocks away from our house. She was Mrs. Strattan.
My grandfather came, which he didn’t very often. He had twelve kids of his own, so he made
frequent trips to any one of them. He came to my dad who was laying there with his back
broken and bought the boys a wagon. A Radio Flyer with the wooden sides and boy that was
something! I think he visited us about two more times in all those years. But that was a booster.
Ferraro: I know that you were born at home like most people were, but what was the medical
care like at the time when your father was hurt?
Rhoads: He eventually had a cast put on and he did recover, but there was no money coming in
when he was laid up like that. But his father, my grandfather probably bought this wagon out of,
I don’t want to use the word pity, but out of empathy for what Clem was going through at that
time. But he recovered and then I just thought the other day, when they were talking about the
floods in Pittsburgh on Saint Patrick’s Day 1936. He took his truck, because there weren’t that
many trucks around, and hauled food to Pittsburgh for that flood. I always that that was a neat
14
thing for him to do, a man from Strattanville, Pennsylvania, a little old rural town, and he hauled
this stuff to Pittsburgh for the flood victims.
Ferraro: I assume that when you father was hurt you had a doctor that came to the house. What
if you needed some additional care, did you go to Clarion?
Rhoads: He went to an osteopathic doctor in Clarion, there were two them in business, Dr. Long
was the one who took care of his back. He did recover, but to see your father lay down who
never shed a tear and showed no emotion, almost screaming when they took those boots off. I
suppose it was the stress on his back. It was scary to a child, and I was just a child then.
Ferraro: When did you start going to school? Do you remember how old you were? You told
us a little about the school situation, but where did you go to school and how old were you?
Rhoads: Well, I actually was one of the youngest ones in my class. I think I was five when I
started first grade, wouldn’t have been six until December 24. It was in Strattanville School;
actually at that time when we lived across from the Methodist church the school was just about a
block away on one of the back streets of Strattanville, Washington [Street] to be specific. They
had names [laughing]. So that was my first school and I don’t remember anything from first
grade, second grade, but in third grade I have some memories of that. All those years we had
wonderful teachers; they lived in the community and they were very caring teachers.
Ferraro: What was an average day like in your early years of going to school when you were in
first, second grade?
Rhoads: Well I don’t remember anything outstanding. You got up and went to school and came
home for lunch, there were no lunches served in schools at that time. I don’t remember anything
specific there was just a natural progression in your life, I guess.
15
Ferraro: What time of day did you come home and when you did you once you got back from
school, did you immediately begin helping your mother with the chores?
Rhoads: Back in second grade, I don’t have any memories of that. It was obviously very normal;
I obviously have memories of things that happened in school. Second grade, the teacher asked
every one of us what we wanted to be. Well, we had just read a story about Indians, and guess
what I said? I wanted to be an Indian squaw! Well everyone laughed, second graders laughed,
and it took me a minute, but I figured why. Then in fourth grade, I have no memory of what I
did before or after school. But the teachers had a rubber hose, and that was to be feared. That
was the punishment, corporal punishment. One girl was told to not chew gum and she later
chewed gum, and she got the rubber hose. The whole community just exploded! How dare she
beat this girl with a rubber hose! It simmered down, but it was a major incident. Most of us
knew better than to test the teacher, and she had. Other than that it was all routine for me.
Ferraro: Did you have other kids, obviously you had brothers and sisters your age, but did you
have other kids outside your family that you spent time with, that you played with?
Rhoads: Yes, there were a number of girls, one when we lived across from the Methodist
church; there was a girl who lived with her grandparents across the street. I can remember
playing dolls with her, but then as I got older there were other girls around Strattanville my age.
We had a good time together. Then you were asked, “could I go play with so and so?” “Yes, but
you be back in an hour.” It wasn’t a question of being gone all day, you were given certain time
limits and you had better abide by that. It was a whole different world, my family was surviving
and I guess that was it, just survival.
16
Ferraro: What effect did the Great Depression have on your everyday life if your family was
surviving, like everyone else was at the time? Do you remember any specific effects, things you
had to go without during the time?
Rhoads: No, I can’t say that I did. As I look back on it, we were poor, but I didn’t know that.
By today’s standards we were definitely poor but as far as doing without, back then, even those
years back my mother had lard stored in the attic for shortening. I have no idea who had a pig,
but she rendered the lard. It was a whole way of life, it was very simple. Foods were very
simple then, too. We didn’t have a lot of money to buy extra things it was just whatever was on
the table you ate. I never went away hungry.
Ferraro: What sorts of foods did you have? Obviously having access to animals, did you have
access to produce or anything like that? What did daily meals consist of?
Rhoads: We always had ham, home cured ham, and lots of pork, my mother would can that, and
chickens. Chickens then were not small and scrawny, they were big and fat, a chicken weighed
maybe seven eight pounds, could feed the family with one bird, lot of meat on them. But we had
an abundance of chicken and pork, not so much beef. One time they even raised rabbits, but I
could not eat the rabbits! When I would see them kill a rabbit, my older brother, that was
enough for me. My dad wasn’t much of a hunter, but many people survived on hunting; rabbits
and squirrels and we didn’t have that when my father was in charge. I thought we had good
meals.
Ferraro: How many animals did you have that your family owned?
Rhoads: I think the most cows we ever had at one time was three. Then my dad had a mule, that
was the first work animal, and it had been a mule that my uncle had used in the mine and that
was kind of a treat to watch this mule pull something and later he had a team of horses that did a
17
lot of that work, but we raised everything. My mother had a big strawberry patch and there were
apples on the trees, potatoes, turnips, you name it, we grew it. My mother canned a lot of that
stuff too, so we had it year round.
Ferraro: Your mother had a garden in addition to the strawberries?
Rhoads: Oh yes, she had a big garden.
Ferraro: What sorts of things did you grow there? Did you have access or orchards or apples,
anything like that?
Rhoads: We had apple trees on the property when we finally moved to the new house, and a big
strawberry patch and then a huge garden. They bought another two acres across the road and
that was planted with potatoes and corn. Potatoes I would say, we never bought potatoes, they
were stored in the food cellar in the basement and lasted all winter.
Ferraro: What sorts of things did you have to buy that you couldn’t produce on your own, food
or otherwise?
Rhoads: Sugar. Sugar was a big item. Bought a lot of sugar, flour, and they used to buy vinegar
out of a big barrel, and you always had to have a piece of the mother of the vinegar, it was a
slimy looking thing and you bought your vinegar out of that. It didn’t come in plastic or glass
bottles at the time. Flour, lots of flour, mother did a lot of baking. She made a lot of bread in my
early years; she made all the bread we ate. It was a real treat if you think about it. Basically
flour, sugar, vinegar, spices, I presume, for the pickles because she always canned pickles. Pasta
was almost unheard of in the thirties, I remember macaroni was the first pasta we ever had but
when that came in I’m not sure. The pasta was not what it is today, it just wasn’t there. I don’t
know when I had my first spaghetti, it wasn’t in our childhood.
18
Ferraro: Did you do traveling outside of Strattanville? Did you go to Clarion to see family?
What were your trips away from home like beyond going to school and the day to day routine?
Rhoads: Well, we went to Clarion for shopping, banking, and so forth that couldn’t be done in
Strattanville. My mother’s parents lived about ten miles away so we would go there on holidays.
My father’ s family was close to twenty miles away so we didn’t go there often and there were so
many of them. Hospital, with the doctors in Clarion, they sent you to Grove City Hospital [45
miles away] so the trips were made to Grove City Hospital. Early, probably in 1940 or a little
earlier, the American Legion had a drum and bugle corps that was made up of my older brother
and I and other veterans [children] from Strattanville, maybe twenty of us all together and we
went to parades all over the Clarion County area. That was fun, I played the bugle and my
brother played the drums and my dad always took a load of kids wherever we were going and
that was one of the big trips out of Strattanville other than meeting grandparents.
Ferraro: You mentioned the drum and bugle corps, but what other organizations were available
to young children, young teenagers at the time?
Rhoads: Not much. At that time the drum and bugle corps and that was just for the children of
the American Legion. The church had no social functions, they had winter meetings where a
visiting pastor came in and asked people to dedicate their lives, born-again was probably similar
to that today. But there wasn’t much social [life] really, the Legion was the center of our social
life. They had a Christmas party every year for the kids, which I always looked forward to.
When I got old enough I joined the Junior Auxiliary of the Legion, but it was the center of our
life.
19
Ferraro: What relationship did your father have, obviously a member of the Legion, what
organizations did your parents belong to? You mentioned being a member of the Democrat
party. What relationship did your family have to other organizations in town?
Rhoads: None. I could quickly say none. The veterans themselves were members of the Legion
and they had an auxiliary, my mother was a part of that. Various projects they had and they all
worked on, the people who belonged to that group. They even had a Junior Auxiliary that I
belong to years later but that was the heart of our family. I don’t think there was much
socialization at that time so I would say the Legion was pretty much it.
Ferraro: Was your father a member of the local school board as well?
Rhoads: Yes, he was.
Ferraro: What sort of involvement did he have with that?
Rhoads: That’s back when they had a county superintendent [of schools], no administrative head
of the schools at that time, they had a county superintendent who was kind of the overseer of all
the schools in the county at that time. My father was president of the board and when they built
the new building in Strattanville, he took the responsibility to drive to Harrisburg for approval of
the plans as they were developed. Totally different from what we have today. He gave it an
awful lot of time, to the building of that new school building.
Ferraro: How long did he serve on the school board?
Rhoads: I would say probably six years at various levels; maybe it was more than that but at least
that much. I know in preparation for the building of that new building, we wondered if he
shouldn’t just move to Harrisburg and work out of there, he spent so much time there.
Ferraro: I’m assuming that members of the school board were all male?
Rhoads: Oh yes.
20
Ferraro: So what was the role of women during this time if men were so involved?
Rhoads: Not very much. Not very much. Back then, the schools could not dare hire a married
woman. She couldn’t be married, but when that came in I’m not sure. There was a lot of
unemployment due to the Depression. We had one teacher who was a local girl, Miss Rickard,
we found out later she was married, and they let her go. She had violated the rules and kept her
marriage a secret, but she couldn’t teach because of the employment issue. Women didn’t have
much of a role, all of the teachers I can recall, except for one who came from Rimersburg [20
miles away], lived in Strattanville. That was the role women had, for the teachers. That’s it.
Ferraro: Your mother was a teacher and had obviously gone to college herself, so can you tell us
a little about your mother’s educational experiences?
Rhoads: Nineteen years old she graduated from Clarion Normal School [now Clarion University
of Pennsylvania]. That was a two year degree, but later they offered courses so that she could
have gotten a four year degree but she must have taught about eight years, nine years, there was
no tenure then. One year you worked in Reynoldsville [20 miles away, in Jefferson County], one
year you were in the Knox [ten miles away, in northern Clarion County] area, wherever you
could get a job. Normal school implies a two year degree. She was 19 when she graduated from
Normal School instead of high school. She took the train from Corsica to Clarion on weekends
so she could get back from school.
Ferraro: Compared to other women, mothers of other children that you knew, was your mother’s
education rare compared to the people who lived in Strattanville?
Rhoads: I would say in Strattanville definitely.
Ferraro: Were there other people who had more education than your mother had or was that
pretty much the extent of people’s education?
21
Rhoads: We had a doctor that lived right in Strattanville and I can’t think of anyone else who
had any more education than my mother did. It was very uncommon, really, if you think about
it.
Ferraro: Even in 1919 it was still very rare for women to have an education?
Rhoads: Yes, yes definitely. There were a few but it wasn’t that common. It doesn’t compare at
all to today.
Ferraro: Your father did not go to college?
Rhoads: He went to the eighth grade. That was kind of the norm for people at the time. But he
was very bright, I always thought.
Ferraro: In the lead up to Pearl Harbor, what kinds of things were you hearing or perceiving
from your parents about the progression and lead up to the war?
Rhoads: Well, it was the Nazi government in Germany that was taking over country after
country, just walking through them and then all of a sudden they were part of the Nazi
government. So when Japan hit us that brought Japan into it and before that I don’t think there
was that much of a threat, but it wasn’t evident until we were bombed in Pearl Harbor that it all
materialized.
Ferraro: Do you have any memory, in the lead up to Pearl Harbor, of hearing your dad talk about
the fear of the Germans or the fear of an attack on the United States as the rest of the world was
becoming involved in the war?
Rhoads: I don’t remember him talking so much about the United States being attacked but it was
the threat of the Nazis taking over all these countries in Europe. At one time, they were ready to
invade France so there was a big chunk of Europe that was already under the control of Hitler.
And that was scary. As I say, once Japan bombed Pearl Harbor that brought Japan in and an
22
invasion. Eventually, Hitler made a deal with Mussolini in Italy and so that brought southern
Europe into the conflict in support of Nazi Germany. So all of Europe was. London in England,
was under siege there from the bombs. There was lots of talk about us getting into the war soon
but everyone said, “no, no, no, that’s not our war.” Once Japan bombed Pearl Harbor it was our
war and that brought us in full tilt.
Ferraro: Were people supporting, your family was Democratic, the President’s actions of
keeping us out of the war or was there--?
Rhoads: It was a controversial thing. There were isolationists and that started when, before
England was ever attacked there were a lot of people that kept saying “this isn’t our war, this
isn’t our war.” So it was controversial but I think at the beginning of the war felt that it was all
out war effort. Roosevelt, I give him credit for bringing everybody in, they may not have liked
some of the things he did. But everybody, industry, everybody was mobilized to fight Nazi
Germany. That was the sum of it.
Ferraro: You mentioned that industries were mobilized, but were there any changes in your
everyday life, things you were perceiving around your town and school, as the mood was
changing?
Rhoads: Oh, it definitely was changing. Very definitely. We didn’t know Pearl Harbor would
be the last, it was just the beginning. Immediate changes were mobilization of factories and
getting arms built. I remember tires were very scarce. Women went to work after the men were
called to the service and that brought women into the workforce where women hadn’t worked
before, so it changed the whole structure of society, really. It never went back and have still
been in the workforce since, never went back. Lots of propaganda, from the other side, well
23
that’s always been there. One side says this and we won’t do that and then they do that and
criticize them.
Ferraro: What kinds of propaganda, if any, do you remember in the lead up to the war?
Rhoads: Well, there were accusations against Roosevelt right away that he knew Pearl Harbor
was going to be bombed and didn’t do anything about it. That was a big controversy. That’s the
biggest one I could think of. There was Tokyo Rose that passed propaganda out against, she was
trying to reach American soldiers, I suppose to stop them from wanting to fight, saying the good
guys were in Nazi Germany and that’s always a controversy. When you have a dispute like that.
That’s all I can think of, Alex. The most impressive thing to me, as I look back on it. Here we
are fighting a war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and prior to that we had Vietnam and the Korean War.
But World War II, everybody was involved. I recalled, thinking about this in grade school and I
guess I was in fifth, sixth grade, somewhere there. They started selling war stamps. Every kid
was to bring in a dime whenever they could and they bought these war stamps. When you got
eighteen dollars and something then they turned it into a war bond and you got twenty five
dollars. But everybody was involved in saving money supporting the war effort. Hollywood
people and prominent people would be out there selling war bonds to support the war and that
was a big thing. The fact that so many people were involved and they did buy those bonds to
support the war effort.
Ferraro: This was even prior to Pearl Harbor?
Rhoads: No this would be after Pearl Harbor.
Ferraro: Back to Pearl Harbor itself, do you have any memories of that day?
Rhoads: Oh, I sure do. It was a Sunday, and my dad had gone to an American Legion council
meeting, Clarion County council meeting. And we had the radio, of course, not everyone had
24
one, but he came in and he just looked grief-stricken. “Put the radio on to such and such a place,
the Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor” [her father said]. I think it was his distress, his concern that
scared me, as a kid. I was, what, twelve years old, but it was the stress of my father’s reaction
that scared me more than my own reaction. I couldn’t perceive that the Japs bombed something
over in the Pacific, what does that have to do with me? But I could tell it had a lot to do with me
because of my father’s reaction.
Ferraro: What were your feelings whenever you got that news, maybe as they relate to seeing
your father being so distressed?
Rhoads: Well, they talked about it and again, we had the radio to hear, my dad watched Lowell
Thomas every night of his life, I think, and that fifteen minutes of news. All these facts kept
coming in and it was an alarming thing, everybody was involved. I remember going to bed at
night for four or five years, praying that the war would come to an end, which the devastation
would stop. There had been so much of it, from North Africa to Europe and the Asian crunch
there. It was just a horrifying thought. Our little world was shaken, let’s say that. Our peace
and comfort and simple life was all altered by that declaration of war onto them and Hitler.
Ferraro: Being thirteen years old, you still had to go to school; everyday life obviously had to go
on.
Rhoads: Oh, that continued.
Ferraro: How, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, how did things change in your everyday life
outside of your family?
Rhoads: The schools, I think it became part of our education. The Champion family was across
the street from us, had five boys, and no radio. One of the older boys came over and wanted to
know if he could listen to the names when they were calling the draft, to use our radio. That was
25
impressive to me. You take a radio for granted, but if a neighbor doesn’t have one, and this older
man comes in and sits in your house and listens to these drawings to see if these numbers are
called, that’s impressive. He would have been, probably mid-thirties, that would be my guess, at
least in his thirties, waiting for his name to be called. He eventually did go, to the service, and
three of the five boys, one was too young and the other one had a 4F classification, I forget what
his physical problem was, but he didn’t qualify.
Ferraro: What were the feelings coming from your family and around the area? Were there
feelings of fear or anger directed toward. . .?
Rhoads: No it was more fear than anger. It may have been subliminal anger. No, it was fear.
Where is this going? So much of the world was involved already. You take Europe and
Northern Africa and China and Japan had been fighting for years and you get the Philippines and
it was just, World War II. Massive amount of countries involved. Every effort was put toward
the war: munitions, and ship building, and scarcities. I remember so clearly, being 13 I didn’t
know anything about nylon hose, but I had some friends who had older sisters and they couldn’t
buy nylon hose. Well, that was like the kiss of death, “I can’t buy nylon hose?” But they all
went to the war effort, parachutes, stuff like that. The rationing came, and we made out better
than some families, having so many in our family. But there were a lot of things you just
couldn’t get.
Ferraro: What were some of those things that were just gone compared to before the war?
Rhoads: Gasoline was rationed. Now we had the truck, and it had really a generous amount of
rationing tickets issued for gasoline. But anybody that just had a car, they gave you just enough
rationing stamps to do the bare essentials. There was no pleasure-riding. You didn’t get in the
car on Sunday and go someplace. There wasn’t enough gasoline. So that was a major thing, and
26
food was scarce. Meat was rationed. All kinds of things, and shoes. Again, with ten members
of the family, we made out ok. But if you had a poor member family, shoes could be a real
issue. You couldn’t get them or had to wait until the rationing stamp was valid to get a pair of
shoes, or sugar or meat or whatever. We raised much of our own food. That was definitely a
thing that effected. . .
[Tape 1, Side 1 ends]
[Tape 1, Side 2]
Ferraro: Can you tell us a little about the actual process of rationing, what your family had to do
to get things that you needed during this time?
Rhoads: Well, there were certain things you couldn’t buy without a rationing stamp. They
weren’t designated for anything in particular, but to buy gasoline, sugar, shoes, meat, and I
would imagine canned goods, whether that was rationed. Anyway, they were issued very
officially by the rationing board; I guess it was the county. I have a book in front of me; it gives
my name, my address, my age, my sex, my weight, and my height. It says book number 4
written in handwriting on it. I would have been the fourth member of my family. My parents,
one two, and then my oldest brother, three, and I would have been the fourth child. You couldn’t
get any of those items that were rationed without a stamp from the book. The price controls, I
had kind of forgotten about that until I looked at the book again, they had price controls on all
these items. Somebody couldn’t just charge whatever they wanted. The government set price
controls and you paid that. They warned you not to pay more than that. Again, they warned you
to take care of those books because to get a new one, when they were issued, you had to bring
the old one back. So it was a very tightly controlled process, this business of rationing.
Ferraro: Every member of your family received a rationing book?
27
Rhoads: Everybody got a book.
Ferraro: How many siblings did you have at this time, at the start of the war in forty one, forty
two?
Rhoads: I actually had six, well; my youngest brother was born in 1941, so yes, he would be just
a baby when the war broke out, so we had ten of them, all together. One for each member of the
family and my parents.
Ferraro: Did you, to spend these stamps, did you take them to the store in town? Provide them
with money and you would pay and use them?
Rhoads: Yes, they could be purchased. At that time we had two full service grocery stores.
Ferraro: The ration books were used for foodstuffs and supplies? Any particular set of supplies
that you needed or just food that they were used for?
Rhoads: Gasoline was included and I don’t know about tires. There was a big shortage of tires,
but I don’t remember if they were rationed, I don’t recall that. But I know rubber was used in the
war effort and that was a very limited commodity. So I would guess, what else is involved I
have forgotten.
Ferraro: Aside from the rationing book, what other sacrifices did your family have to make to
contribute to the war effort? Beyond going without some luxury items that you had.
Rhoads: Actually we didn’t buy many luxury items, with ten people in the family there wasn’t
much. But I actually remember the bond stamps. Saving stamps, I guess they were called, not
bond stamps. In the later years of the war, there was a fire tower in Strattanville proper not
outside, but in the borough, and we took turns manning that. What they were doing was looking
for planes flying over Strattanville, and I believe they had these at seven mile intervals. They
were manned, somebody take charge one day and then you recruit who was in charge of the fire
28
tower. I was older, then, I don’t know exactly when they started, but it was a big deal. They had
a telephone and you called the operator, which was a little office in Strattanville and one ring you
got the operator and then she connected you with the place that you wanted to give this
information. We were watching basically for planes coming from the Cleveland area, over
Strattanville, on their way to the east coast. I remember one plane went over that we hadn’t
anticipated and we had to call it in. I had a creepy feeling that somebody was out to harm us,
and I think probably, and I could be wrong here, and it could be precautionary, that it was to see
if planes in the skies above us that shouldn’t be there. But it was a fascinating thing. If I had
signed up for two or three hours, have a friend come up and we had kind of fun, but you still had
to watch for those planes and report them if they went over that area. I think there was another
one in Corsica, which would be about six miles, seven miles away, but they had them that close
so there were a lot of them in the United States, watching for planes.
Ferraro: Who organized this, the watching the tower? Was it a county office?
Rhoads: I would presume it was a county office, but I don’t really remember that. There were a
lot of people involved and many of us were teenagers at that time. I thought I was a teenager,
maybe I should say that. It turned out to be scary in one sense that they felt threatened that we
had to do this and yet it was fun to have your friend come and spend those hours. It was fun.
Ferraro: From the start of the war you were thirteen, just about to turn fourteen?
Rhoads: No, I was twelve and I turned thirteen in December.
Ferraro: Throughout the course of the war you were a teenager. What were your relationships
like with the people in town, your friends? What was the situation like?
Rhoads: Well, the older guys were all going to the war, those that were old enough to go. My
older brother went in in his senior year, so there were many older ones in Strattanville, you know
29
doing the real war effort. One of those young men, he was probably ten years older, maybe a
little older; he was a prisoner of war. Now, in little old Strattanville, in rural Pennsylvania, that
was awesome. One of ours [emphasis hers] is a statistic now? And he eventually came back, one
of the Rensel boys, he eventually was released, I think he was in Germany. But he was captured
and that was awesome, to think that somebody we knew was a prisoner of war. Now I know
there were many, but in Strattanville proper, we were lucky that there was only one. Nobody
within the town itself was killed. There was one man just outside of Strattanville who had just
reached his destination overseas and he was killed on the day after he got there. He was not a
citizen of Strattanville, from just outside of Strattanville. We were lucky, probably, that that was
one of the only fatalities in our area.
Ferraro: How did news reach you and your family? You said the Pittsburgh paper came every
day still to you during this time?
Rhoads: Oh, yes, we read it until it quit publishing.
Ferraro: Your family was one of the few maybe who had a radio during this time so as you
heard war of how the war was progressing, either in the Pacific or in Europe, how did things
change as you received news? Did the mood change and could you perceive it during this time?
Rhoads: Well, there was a lot of, within the Strattanville community, you knew everybody. So
if somebody had a letter from their son that quickly was provided as information for the entire
community. But where so and so was, and sometimes they didn’t know for sure where they
were, but there was a lot of first hand information from the families of servicemen. There was a
lot of letter writing. I remember writing to one of the Champion boys who was, well, he was
next to the youngest and he went in, well, he was in for a lot of the war, two or three years of it.
They begged you to send letters, they send them today, school groups and so forth write letters to
30
the Iraq people serving in Iraq, so it was really promoted. When Lloyd [her older brother] went
in and people didn’t get letters maybe as often, they would say “Pat, write to this so and so.” I
would write to some of his buddies and other guys. I had a cousin stationed in London and I
wrote often to him during the war, there was a lot of that, so that you kept in touch with people
who are sent to this foreign land to fight for your safety.
Ferraro: You mentioned writing letters to your brother’s friends, but what kind of responses did
you get back from them?
Rhoads: Just tickled to death to get a letter. I remember one of the guys in the service, that were
Lloyd’s friends, I never knew them. It ended with the war, but they were so delighted to get any
letters. I think that still may exist, they do periodic letters for holidays, for servicemen overseas
and so forth. So that’s a good thing that that has continued. I can’t imagine being in a foreign
land and everybody got mail but you, so if you could contribute to somebody, momentarily, at
least, you felt you were doing something right.
Ferraro: Specifically about your brother Lloyd, where was he stationed during this time? You
mentioned he entered in his senior year of high school?
Rhoads: He went in the Navy and did his boot camp in Michigan or some place and was sent to
the west coast and eventually ended up in Guam. The war was winding down then; he was never
in any danger, really. That happened to a lot of boys; they were leaving high school and going
into the service. They automatically graduated, if they hadn’t finished their senior year, they
always got their diploma. That was part of the war effort too, a relaxation of standards, shall we
say.
Ferraro: How did your parents feel about your brother being in the Navy, stationed far away
from home, even just in the Pacific?
31
Rhoads: I think they took that as exactly what he should have been doing, that everybody should
support this war effort. My father of course had this experience earlier in World War I, but
everybody was doing it. It wasn’t just my brother it was many brothers and sons throughout the
country and everybody supported that effort.
Ferraro: Did you have other cousins or family members who were stationed overseas?
Rhoads: Yes, yes.
Ferraro: Any in particular that you communicated with? That you were close to at this time?
Rhoads: Cousin Glenn, as I mentioned earlier, he was in London and he wrote quite often. I
have a postcard here from London from him, but I saved some of those things, kind of fun to
look back on.
Ferraro: You mentioned that toward the later years of the war, when you were in high school,
that most of the guys had been drafted so you obviously still went to high school during this
time? Were you working during this time as well?
Rhoads: Oh yes, I spent my freshman summer, the summer after my freshman year, and I
worked every year. Just to take care of myself, the way we were raised, next to the oldest, I felt I
had to be self-sufficient so I went to work.
Ferraro: Where did you work?
Rhoads: I worked in Clarion. You walked back and forth, it was only three miles. Sometimes it
was very cold and once in a while my dad would come and get me, but that was what you did.
There were lots of jobs you could get.
Ferraro: Where did you work, specifically?
Rhoads: I worked at a drug store, making banana splits and sodas, that kind of thing. Probably
my first real money I ever made, so to speak. During the war, a friend of mine, they had a
32
Sylvania factory in Brookville; I was going to Clarion-Limestone, which was about twelve miles
away. We were allowed to get out of school early and the bus picked us up to school and
brought us to Brookville at the Sylvania plant, where they made filaments for light bulbs. We
worked there, I started before school was out, and I think I worked there that whole summer. I
was fifteen, sixteen, there were so many jobs to be done. Like I said, they let us out of school; it
was part of the war effort. I’m not exactly sure what those were exactly, I know it was filaments,
but where they fit into the war effort I have forgotten. But again everybody was mobilized.
Now, today, can you imagine a sixteen year old being excused from school to go and work in a
factory? But we did it. We had a bus right there, I don’t know where the other people on the bus
came from, if it was Clarion, or someplace, but we weren’t the only ones on the bus. At night we
would get back on the bus and they would drop us off where we lived.
Ferraro: Was this effort to go to work in Brookville, was that effort set up by the government or
the company themselves contacted looking for young people to come and work? Who organized
the effort?
Rhoads: Well, I’m not sure of that. I would imagine it came from the government basically and
was then turned over to the factory involved with the war orders. Sylvania, called Sylvania plant
then, was big in this area then. They’re all gone now. There were factories in Detroit and
someplace, several around. They did eventually make the light bulbs but I remember it was very
tedious work, working the assembly line and you had better be alert because if you screwed up,
they would let you know! [laughing] Yet, again, it forced you to grow up a little bit too. But
that’s how comprehensive the war effort was, in my mind. I know there have been other wars,
but there was an all-out pressure to do it and fight back quick and that’s would that would’ve
been too.
33
Ferraro: How much did you make working at the Sylvania plant?
Rhoads: You know, Alex, I couldn’t tell you. I know I bought clothes I couldn’t have afforded
before: a dress here, pair of shoes there.
Ferraro: Compared to, you mentioned working at the soda fountain?
Rhoads: Oh it was better money, oh yeah.
Ferraro: How long did you do it, just one summer working at the Sylvania plant in Brookville?
Rhoads: You know, I think so. We started in the spring or late winter, and I think I worked the
rest of the summer at Sylvania. Got to know the stores in Brookville, you know, it was kind of
fun.
Ferraro: You mentioned the sacrifices that you and your family had to make, but how did your
schooling changing during this time? How did that change? Being in high school was obviously
different, but what sacrifices did the schools have to make to keep providing you with an
education in addition to the sacrifices you had to make at home?
Rhoads: There was a shortage of teachers. Now, I suppose the male teachers were in the service,
I wasn’t thinking too much about that at the time. Today a teacher has to be qualified in what
they are teaching, but they hired a teacher back in those days, one was a home economics teacher
and one was the business teacher, typing and bookkeeping. Well, if they didn’t have a phys. ed.
teacher then that person was drafted to teach a phys. ed. class in addition to their home
economics or business courses. Now, today that’s unthinkable. You have to have a qualified
teacher. I came into Clarion-Limestone as a freshman, all the other girls had been there since
seventh grade, so I didn’t have the background in some of those areas that they had, like sports or
phys. ed. I came in not knowing a darn thing because we didn’t have phys. ed. in Strattanville
[laughing] so that was challenging. But anyway I think that would be a lack of male teachers. I
34
think there were a couple of older male teachers there, but the rest were all, a couple of them
from Pittsburgh, but that tells me that almost anyone could get a job in the school district at that
time in the forties.
Ferraro: Do you remember any changes to the curriculum to deal with the war? Was there any
increased focus on learning about the day to day, the news from the warfront or learning about
European history to kind of get a background?
Rhoads: I don’t think so. I don’t think that there were any changes there because they had a
balanced curriculum before the war. We had a lot of current events in civics class particularly,
so that could have been enhanced. But other than that I don’t think there were many changes to
the curriculum in high school because of the war.
Ferraro: Your friends that you went to school with at this time, where they also from
Strattanville or from the larger Clarion-Limestone?
Rhoads: Oh, from the larger, very much larger community. Clarion Township, Strattanville
Borough; Clarion Township goes all around Clarion [Borough]. Now Clarion [Borough] did not
come to Clarion-Limestone, but almost as far south as New Bethlehem [ten miles away]. It
covered a vast geographical area.
Ferraro: Any friends in particular that you were close to during that time or what was your
relationship like with your closest friends during the war years, in your high school years?
Rhoads: I don’t think it was any different than any other group. You mixed where you could,
academically and socially. But as I say, it was from a vast geographical area that those kids were
pulled from. I think Clarion-Limestone still pulls from a vast area. That wouldn’t be any
different.
35
Ferraro: By the time you were in high school, what were the other students coming in your class
year, in terms of wealth or resources?
Rhoads: Wealth didn’t exist. Some had a little bit more than others; I don’t recall a lot of the
boys having cars at that time.
Ferraro: Were there many boys left even in high school who were not in the war?
Rhoads: Yes, some of them chose to leave early and they weren’t drafted, if I recall correctly,
like my brother who went in senior year, were not drafted. I think you wanted to choose which
branch you went into so that’s why you volunteered. Now, later, I graduated [from high school]
in ‘46, and the war was winding down in ‘45 when he went in. You knew the war was winding
down.
Ferraro: How did your family know the war was winding down? There was obviously news
coming of continued victories on both fronts but how did things kind of change in forty five?
Rhoads: Well, they had, [General Dwight D.] Eisenhower and the Normandy invasion that
proved to be a disaster. By this time, they had stopped the bombings somewhat in London and
now we are attacking the Nazis in Germany, bombing several of those cities greatly. So you get
a few successes and then I think they were driven out of France, if I remember correctly, the
Nazis were driven out of France and forced to back up. Eisenhower’s D-Day invasion, not
Normandy, that was not good, but after that with a few successes you could see that the end
might be coming. Wasn’t it April or May of V-E Day [in 1945]? What a celebration, then we
had V-J Day in August I believe, when Japan agreed to surrender. Now that was the biggie. It
was one thing to get Hitler under control in Germany but you had to contain Japan so when
Japan finally surrendered there was a party all over Clarion, everybody was just so relieved after
that long, exhausting war, and it still didn’t last as long as the Iraq war.
36
Ferraro: You mentioned hearing about General Eisenhower, what were you learning about the
bigger figures of the war as they were gaining their fame, people like Eisenhower, or famous
generals or other famous people in the war?
Rhoads: Actually, I don’t think they released a lot of the information about the failures. We
have heard it since about the London bombings, that was played up. When you went to the
movies the first ten minutes was the war bulletin, a feature. Every movie had this news shown
on film, what was happening throughout the world with this very dignified voice in the
background just trying to scare the living daylights out of you how bad it was [laughing]. But
that voice was very memorable at that time, I don’t remember the name of the person. So, the
highlights were released. The Normandy invasion was a bust but as they pushed the Nazis from
France the bombings switched from London and the blackouts there to Germany and bombing a
couple of their cities very successfully. Then you knew that it could be winding down. But it
was pretty bad at the beginning. They had a head start on us.
Ferraro: What were the feelings either toward Japanese-Americans or German-Americans at the
time? Were there any changes in feelings toward those groups of people that you knew of?
Rhoads: They had the internments in California of the Japanese-Americans [emphasis hers]
citizens that because they Japanese they were confined? That was cruel, it was scary. My last
name was Seigworth. Now that’s a German name. I secretly wondered is somebody hating me
because I had a German name because the Germans were greatly hated, just vilified. It never
came to that. It was a childhood fear. But if you think about it, wasn’t that a normal reaction
after you heard about the Japanese-Americans being confined? You have a German name, are
they going to criticize you?
37
Ferraro: Back to the victory days in 1945, do you have any specific memories of those victory
days? You mentioned being in Clarion at the time?
Rhoads: Well that was the hub, the courthouse was in Clarion, the college [Clarion State
College, now Clarion University of Pennsylvania] was in Clarion, shopping was in Clarion,
shopping was centralized in town to. So you went to Clarion for big events. I don’t have
specific memories about V - E Day; I know there was a big celebration, but Victory in Japan
Day. Everybody that could get out was on the streets on Clarion, it was like the biggest parade
you have ever seen in your life. Like when the Steelers win the Super Bowl, they show you
pictures of celebrations in downtown Pittsburgh, that’s what Clarion was like. Everybody was
just yelling and screaming and hollering, “we won we won we won!” It was a very big event.
Ferraro: On that particular day were you working in Clarion or there with your family? Why
were you in Clarion on that day?
Rhoads: I had friends that lived in Clarion and a lot of times, we’d make arrangements to meet
in Clarion for a movie or whatever. I met friends in there and that’s my biggest memory. I don’t
think I was working that day. By that time, I was working at the diner, that was my senior year,
but I don’t think I was working that day. Anyway, I obviously met friends in Clarion and that
was common. You didn’t have transportation, so you took a ride with some kid from
Strattanville or you walked, you just didn’t think anything of it. But I met friends there and we
spent the night celebrating. It was just one big party, that Victory in Japan Day.
Ferraro: Did you meet any returning veterans from the war?
Rhoads: Oh my there were veterans and I think they were on leave, many of them, probably not
discharged but close to discharge, yes. There were veterans everywhere. Clarion and partying, I
met your grandfather that day and he didn’t let it go so I ended up marrying him [laughing].
38
Ferraro: The day that you met him, was that the day of one of the victory celebrations?
Rhoads: Victory in Japan Day. [Correction: after the interview had ended, my grandmother and
I discussed this connection between V - J Day and she and my grandfather meeting and this date
is not correct. She did not meet him until summer of 1946, because they were married in June
1947 and had not known each other for a full year. She does know that she met him on the day
of a huge party in downtown Clarion]
Ferraro: He had been back from --?
Rhoads: He had been stationed in the Navy on the West Coast, wore his uniform. I do know he
had that on, a lot of them did. I expect that at that time, I don’t know what the regulations were,
that most of the guys had their uniforms on. Whether that was required, I’m not sure.
Ferraro: What did he tell you about his time overseas? He did not see any combat that I know
of?
Rhoads: No. He was on a ship that somebody in the family has a picture of. He never talked too
much about it. He wasn’t political, that’s what everybody was doing; he had a lot of friends that
were the same age, close to the same age. I don’t think in hindsight, I think it was just the thing
that you did at that time. Everybody did it and you did too. I don’t think it was a serious “I must
do this” kind of thing with him. I don’t think so, it wasn’t with my older brother either. It was
what you were expected to do. You could volunteer or get drafted any way. You did so many
years and you were out.
Ferraro: The mood, obviously in the aftermath of V-J Day and V - E Day was very positive?
Did things change, literally overnight or how did you see the progression from a sacrificing
economy to being very positive? How did the mood change after the victories?
39
Rhoads: I don’t think it was an immediate return to any normalcy. There were still a lot of
shortages and restrictions on life. I think most of the servicemen were gradually being released.
Your grandfather was released, it seems to me he had to go back for his discharge, you had a
leave and then you go back and were discharged. I’m not certain about that but it was typical.
They weren’t all released because the war was over, there was still a lot of clean-up to do. In
fact, my brother was in Guam, the war was winding down, he never saw any combat, but they
still had a big military compound in Guam. I don’t know whether it was dispersal or equipment
what, but there were still a lot of guys stationed overseas. I would say the same of now. They
are still in Japan, still in Germany after all these years, but it was a gradual thing. But when the
veterans started to come back, where were the jobs? They wanted to work in the factories so the
government instituted what they called the 52-20 club. Every veteran, could take a year, and
draw $20 a week for 52 weeks and then you were expected to get a job or go to school. Then
they had the GI bill which allowed those people to go to school on the government. So the
college’s built temporary huts for veterans that were married to come in and bring their family
with them and stayed on campus and get their degree. All by the government, so that was a big
deal and that helped with the economy. That’s why you had so many graduating in the early
fifties from college because of the GI bill. That 52-20 club always fascinated me and really they
were kind of ridiculed, “Oh look at him he’s on the 52-20 club!” He get’s $20 a week to buy
cigarettes and didn’t even look for a job. But it was a transition back into society and then the
boom started in the early fifties with the housing development and people marrying and having
babies and so forth.
Ferraro: It was difficult for veterans coming home from the war to find work in the months after
it?
40
Rhoads: I think it was but there was an element too after this war that they were willing to draw
on this 52-20 club and just take a year off. Then the college, they all, many of them went to
college and there was a boom there.
Ferraro: What was the later attitude like toward veterans as they came back? A sense of
admiration, respect?
Rhoads: Admiration, respect, nothing but respect for those men. Of course you asked each
individual what was their job in the Navy, in the services, so that was kind of fascinating, too.
One guy I dated at that time, and that was my senior year, had been a bombardier on an airplane.
That was fascinating, but he took the 52-20 club and then started college. Never did finish and I
always thought what a waste. He was obviously very bright.
Ferraro: It was very common for veterans to take the GI Bill?
Rhoads: To go to college? Very definitely. Quonset huts, I don’t know what that name means
today, but the college [Clarion University] as we know today has many new buildings, but there
were all these stupid looking huts that families could live in while they were going to school.
Many of the guys did that.
Ferraro: Coming back from the war, the mood was very positive, was there an inclination for
people to get married quickly? Did people get married immediately after the husband came
back?
Rhoads: I know they did. Some were married during the war. One of the girls in my class had
married an upperclassman in the service. That was awesome: she’s married, a woman and she’s
still in my class at school? That was awesome; we couldn’t figure that one out. But that was not
uncommon for them to marry before they went overseas. Some of them waited and some of
them never came back. Many from Strattanville waited until their guy came back. There was
41
lots of emotional stress on couples too, as they came back. The Baby Boomers who were born
right after the war, official Baby Boomers.
Ferraro: Aside from the returning veterans that you knew, how did you learn about the personal
stories of the war at the time? Was it something you were interested in learning about? From
hearing from your brother, from others?
Rhoads: They didn’t talk much, outside of stating their job, like I mentioned that bombardier on
the Air Force. That was all you would get out of them. They never talked about we bombed
such and such. It never came out. I suppose some of them talked, but none to my knowledge. I
wrote letters to Lloyd [her older brother] and knew what his duties were pretty much, and his
attitude. Most of them didn’t have much to say or maybe I didn’t ask the right questions, I don’t
know. At that age who is greatly interested in what they did? I suppose my interest wasn’t as
great as what it should have been.
Ferraro: What did grandpa do in his years coming back from the war? What did he do? Did he
take advantage of the GI Bill?
Rhoads: Your grandfather? No. His father wanted him to go into the bank as a clerk and he said
he couldn’t see himself working inside all day so he didn’t do that and worked at a gas station
and he stayed there a couple years until he bought that business out in Limestone [Township].
Ferraro: As you were graduating from high school, what were your future plans at that point?
Rhoads: Not what they should have been. When I was still working at the diner, my father came
in one day and told me he would borrow the money so I could go to college. Well, I had taken
care of myself since ninth grade, clothes and everything and said no. Shortsighted, I know. I
thought I’m not going through that after four years of high school. So, I really didn’t have any.
Most girls were getting married. Careers for women were not that big at that time. I had a
42
couple cousins who had been to college and graduated and taught school. But I didn’t see myself
in that role. [Note: After her youngest child, started school in the late 1960s, she started, and
graduated from, Clarion State College, now known as Clarion University of Pennsylvania, with
Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, teaching elementary school for 25 years until her retirement in
1993]
Ferraro: Other girls your age, that was common for them? Few pursued higher education?
Rhoads: I would say very few, very few.
Ferraro: What were the opportunities available to girls graduating from high school, in the
aftermath of the war?
Rhoads: Well, you could work in the food service business; you could get a job as a secretary,
not highly skilled but secretary, work in the bank. Owens-Illinois hired a lot of young girls, and
they stayed there a long time. It was good money. Probably the best money around.
Ferraro: Had the overall role of women changed coming back from the war? You mentioned
that men returned and it was hard to find jobs? Did women keep those jobs [they had taken
during the war]?
Rhoads: No, many went back to the home but some never did. They had been out in the world
and made their own way and that was a revolution in itself that women had found a place of their
own, that they could make their own living. I don’t think it ever returned truly. For years after
the war, for years after the war, it wasn’t what it is today. There were more women working then
you had ever dreamed possible. The idea that you were still supposed to stay home and raise
your own children, that was still very much in effect.
Ferraro: Did you know any women who had entered the workforce during the course of the war
and either stayed there or went back home after the men came home?
43
Rhoads: The ones I knew returned to their wife or mother role. Most of them had children, but
the ones I knew without children still took back that role.
Ferraro: Do you have any other memories of experiences during the war that come to mind after
the war?
Rhoads: Well, we had the blackouts during the war. This God-awful siren would blow. It was
not like any other siren you had ever heard and that was the indication that you get your lights
out and cover the windows so that absolutely no light shined out the windows. That was similar
to our fire tower watching for the planes. It was still kind of the effort that even way back in
Western Pennsylvania we were still having these blackouts. It was precautionary, it was
something we did and we took it seriously.
Ferraro: Did you ever feel there was a real threat to your family’s livelihood? That something
like that was actually going to happen or was it just a general being prepared for it?
Rhoads: I think just general preparedness. However that threat was always over your head
because of the magnitude of the war. I took it all very seriously being a young person. It was
very serious stuff, the fact that they mobilized county after county to do this, there had to some
reason for it, fear in the background, at least.
Ferraro: Back to the aftermath of the war, what was the outlook like for the future, having
defeated both Japan and Germany? The national outlook, maybe the outlook you had for how
things were going to proceed from this point?
Rhoads: Before the war was over, there was a lot of criticism of Roosevelt, Potstown [Potsdam]
specifically. They felt he had given too much, he and Churchill, to Stalin. That they sat back and
let Stalin enter Berlin before the Americans and English go in, even though the Americans had
bombed successfully. To put Stalin in, they let him come in and that’s when you saw the
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division of Germany as an ultimate result of the war. There was a lot of fear, I guess, of Stalin,
and they way that the Russians looked at things. Ultimately, that resulted in the Cold War, that
last from fifty to ninety, forty years of the Cold War. You’ve probably read about that or maybe
lived through some of it with the Berlin Wall, when it finally came down it brought the Russians
down eventually and they lost their whole empire there, all those states. So that went on a long
time and I would say that was immediately after the war ended. This rivalry with the Russian
country, the U.S.S.R., and the Americans, and France, and England. That was a very long,
ongoing feud, really, billions of dollars spent on armaments to fight them off if they ever did do
anything. Eventually, of course, Russia collapsed, but it was a long time. So that fear was there
for a long, long time.
Ferraro: You as an individual, what was your outlook like? Through the years of sacrifice of the
war, growing up in the Great Depression, what was your outlook as a teenager, as a young
woman?
Rhoads: They had a draft when the Korean War started and there was a big amount of
conversation about calling back veterans to the Korean War. That scared me because I had just
been married and Tom [her husband] was a veteran, so are they going to call him back? His
mother thought I was being silly, but again when the national government says they were going
to recall many of these vets, I was concerned. Then we had that and we had Vietnam, which was
another disaster and it’s been a long history of wars that we wonder why we fought.
Ferraro: You were married in June of 1946?
Rhoads: 1947, yes.
Ferraro: The outlook was good, you were positive about where the country was going?
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Rhoads: I think so, until the Korean War came up and then you raised your eyebrows. What’s
coming now? I think so, we had used the bomb and brought Japan to its knees and why not be
optimistic?